


the double

by meditationonbaaal



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Anal, Double Penetration, F/M, Multi, Smut, Tickling, Weird things happen on Halloween, double Jug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:14:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27286261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meditationonbaaal/pseuds/meditationonbaaal
Summary: Jughead swipes his beanie off his head and self-consciously rakes his nails through his hair. Staring down into his empty crown, he cannot help admitting, “Sometimes I do wish there were two of me.”He yanks his beanie back on with another huff, shaking his head. “I know I can be really narrow-minded. It’s hard for me to let myself get distracted when I want to write something. I just don’t want to waste it because when writer’s block hits, it really hits,” he rambles, knowing he is making excuses for himself. “It would be perfect if I could be in two places at once sometimes. One could write and the other could be with Betty in the way she needs.”Sabrina listens without interruption and nods, if not in agreement then at least in acknowledgment. Sensing he is finished feeling sorry for himself, she proposes, “Sounds like you need to find a happy medium.”
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones/Jughead Jones
Comments: 135
Kudos: 148
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees, Riverdale Kink Week





	1. the usurper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theheavycrown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theheavycrown/gifts), [ArsenicPanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsenicPanda/gifts).



> Prompt: Betty with two Jugheads, I don't know how, I don't know why, with double penetration. 
> 
> First of all, I want to thank _theheavycrown_ for submitting this prompt for Riverdale Kink Week, so I am dedicating this fic to her. I was intrigued from the first moment I saw it on the prompt list and took the leap, so I hope you all enjoy how it plays out. 
> 
> I would also like to dedicate this fic to _ArsenicPanda_ for lending a helping hand with editing and providing some much-needed feedback on it. Thank you so much!
> 
> Some caveats, this will get kinky, don't worry, but the first two chapters are all set-up and plot. I know, giving a kink fic a plot, who dare. I will update the tags accordingly when the smutty finale is released. Disclaimer, I haven't finished writing chapter three yet, so some details to follow.

It was an unforeseen conundrum. At the time, conflating Betty with his ability to write seemed like a good thing, a productive thing.

Romance was never a focal point in his writing, so it followed that romantic entanglements were never front runners in his thoughts. Jughead preferred to write. While his best friend Archie’s life revolved around these empty flirtations, Jughead saw them as absurd mating rituals and worse, distractions. Rather than leap-frog ceaselessly from girl to girl, Jughead wrote. Besides, no one was looking to fill in the blanks on his dance card.

When Jughead was on a creative jag, things tended to fall by the wayside – school functions, friendships, even family obligations on occasion.

Sometimes writing was the only consolation he had. It made it bearable, sinking into another one of his insomnia and worry-driven fantasies while he sat vigil next to the couch in the living room. Typing along on his sticky keyboard to the tinny drawl of late-night talk shows and keeping an ear for snags in the steady rumble of his dad’s drunken snoring, Jughead found some unexpected peace in those writing sessions.

Luckily, he had to remember only a handful of social obligations. Even fewer would notice if he never followed through on them. That was by design, to be honest. He wanted to be free to write, and before his dad got sober, he had little room in his life for any other distractions. 

To Jughead, few could compete with his writing. No one seemed interesting enough to earn his attention, certainly not when he was high on the sweet drug of inspiration. He found it easy to live inside his head, in front of his laptop, with reality crumbling away until his brain was nothing but a soup of twisting plots and character development and vivid imagery. 

Until Betty. Betty was different. Some might say she manipulated – spoke to his pride. Unlike any before her, unlike Archie or his father, she bid favor through his writing first and not his attentions, not his time or energy, not his heart, though all those things followed soon after. His ego worked beyond him and opened to her first. 

She knew the spell. She slid into the booth seat across from him and cast it without compunction. It wasn’t just his ego working beyond him that night, but Jug wonders now if he looked as bewitched as he felt when he willingly slid his laptop across the table. It still feels loopy to think about now, how easily he relinquished his writing, his very private pride and joy, to someone else, _anyone_ else, never mind that it was Betty, one of his oldest friends, Archie’s other best friend, his as well in a way.

Scrolling to the top of the document, Betty, with her sweet yet assertive charms, bid him to place another order for onion rings while she read.

Jughead blinked and found himself at the service counter flagging down the nearest waitress. Glancing over his shoulder, Betty was still in their booth right where he left her with his laptop, unlocked, vulnerable, open to interpretation, her interpretation. Her index finger smoothing along the touchpad, her eyes intent and unwavering in their interest on the words on the screen, his words, Jughead felt a cramp of unease and self-doubt condensing in his chest.

Jughead’s order for more onion rings came out in a rush of panic, and then he was racing back to the booth, feeling like he was returning to a castle that had already been ransacked by some mesmerizing and stunning and lovely – sorceress.

The bright squares of electric blue light remained steady in her eyes, but he could see the words moving through the shine of her pupils as she scrolled. Jughead felt himself sinking with them, tumbling through the word document and her eyes like someone pushed him over the edge of a wooded hill. He hoped at any moment to catch onto something, find purchase on a dead snag or a small sapling, any small compliment she could offer to give back his bearings. 

“Is it,” he began but felt his lips seal themselves shut as she lifted one index finger to the ceiling.

“I’m not finished yet,” she murmured with a smidge of heat, mildly bothered by his interruption,but her eyes remained locked on the screen.

He thinks he fell in love with her then. He also thinks he fell in love with her first. Betty could always charm him into letting her be the exception to every one of his rules. Whatever hypnosis Betty Cooper worked over him ended up being a far more potent inspirational narcotic than anything he had hidden in his personal stash of creativity.

She was too clever by half, enough to distract – challenge him. She caught his inappropriate allusions to Dostoevsky’s _Crime and Punishment_ , and she pointed out his forced symbolism of the couch in one of his short stories. She smoothed out so many of the rough edges in his writing, and he found he never minded her criticisms because she was never doing it to nitpick, never actively trying to find some fault in his writing. She did it because she knew he could do better, and that was the extra push he didn’t know he needed. Betty was always good at that. She was a source of succor and a humbling presence all-in-one, lifting him up and bringing him down to earth with a single edit. 

At first, he did not mind putting off writing to be with her. She was a far more interesting specimen. She commanded his attentions, and he really did feel bewitched by everything she did, everything she said. Then, he recognized she was fuel for the fire. She made him want to write more, not because she was boring or off-putting, but exactly the opposite. She was, for lack of a better word, far more inspiring than his isolated muddle of books and films and songs.

In time, he started to recognize she was these things, the personification of these things, the reason for these things. His writing was not meant to exist inside a vacuum. He fell in love with her and recognized all of it existed for her, not the other way around.

Jughead felt it was a privilege, being allowed access to this prime source of encouragement and creativity, and to his surprise, she loved him back. More, she loved his writing. It was this potent mixture of motivation and pride that made Jughead reach for his laptop more and more often. Some creative worm had burrowed inside his brain, and it had her name. She was his muse, his editor, his biggest cheerleader, and he never wanted to take that for granted. To do so would dishonor her. 

What fresh irony, he thinks now. His intents started to outweigh his impacts, and before he knew what was happening, his love for her sent him down rabbit hole after rabbit hole in his writing. He had never written more in his entire life and never with so much substance and nuance. Somewhere along the way he realized he could see nothing but her, yet he had lost sight of the actual her all the same. In his hunt to honor her, he neglected her.

* * *

His laptop dies, and its death irons out the hunch in his shoulders as he leans back against the booth seat. When he raises his arms high above his head, the vinyl squeaks dramatically, and Jughead thanks god for whomever invented the auto-save function. There aren’t many outlets in his favorite writing hole, but Pop usually lets him plug in his laptop behind the service counter when it runs out of juice.

Jughead reaches for his coffee mug, takes a swig and grimaces. It has gone cold and acrid, but he forces the rest of it down, clenching his stomach, which growls in retaliation.

Scooping up his laptop and the charger, he slides out of the booth on achy legs and over to the service counter. Without question, Pop takes it and plugs it in for him, and then he asks Jughead if he wants a warm-up. Jughead thanks him kindly but knows he could use something warm in his belly, too. He places his regular order and tells Pop he plans to take a turn about the parking lot, get some feeling back in his dead legs. 

Outside, Jughead can see his breath in the chilly autumn air. He stretches again, twisting his torso to work out the twinge in his lower back from sitting too long. He watches his sigh leave him and dissipate in the waning light. Zipping up his jacket, he pulls his gloves out of his pocket, and his fingers brush against his cell phone. It has probably been a couple hours since he checked it.

As soon as the phone is out of his pocket, the screen lights up on its own, and Jughead sees the stack of text bubbles disappearing down into the bottom of the notification stream. Sucking his teeth, he notices the time. Looking up, he spots the sun sinking behind the tree line. He could have sworn it was noon only a couple hours ago.

Half the messages are from Betty. Around two o’clock, she asked if he wanted to join her with Archie and Veronica for a double-feature at the Bijoux tonight. At four o’clock, she sends her love and hopes he is getting some good writing done. At six o’clock, she figures he won’t be coming and asks if she can see him later tonight. It is nearly seven in the evening, which means she is probably in the theatre by now.

Jughead knows the Bijoux’s schedule inside and out, especially since he is in charge of the entertainment column for the _Blue and Gold_ . Every year the Bijoux shows a horror double-feature on Fridays for the entire month of October. This was the last weekend. Betty had dropped hints about all of them going for weeks, but he guesses it slipped his mind. _Crap_.

The first movie would be wrapping up around eight-thirty. He figures he could cut straight through the middleman and call her instead of texting. Jughead has never been partial to texting anyway. 

Finishing a couple laps around the lot, Jughead steps back into the warmth of the diner. Rubbing his hands together, he is pleased to find a steaming plate and refilled coffee mug back in his booth. The diner nearly empty, Jughead feels okay with shouting his thanks to Pop as he takes his seat. Pop Tate comes out from the kitchen and waves at him in welcome, taking his spot behind the service counter and returning to the paperback pinned open on the counter by a couple salt and pepper shakers. 

Jug’s phone remains silent through his meal, and therefore, it stays in his jacket pocket on the seat next to him. By the time he finishes his double cheeseburger and onion rings, his laptop is charged enough to get some more writing done. He exchanges his dirty plates for the laptop and another coffee refill and leaves Pop a generous tip on the counter.

Jughead doesn’t know how much time passes, but when he looks up again, the parking lot outside is empty and the sky is completely dark. Pop is wiping down the counters, and the entire diner smells like bleach. Jughead yawns and studies the ground at the bottom of his coffee mug. It looks like a lurking shadow, and he tilts his mug side to side to watch it sway and then disintegrate.

When he looks back up, he startles to see the new transfer Sabrina Spellman sitting in the seat across from him. “You missed a killer double-feature,” she informs him.

Recovering, Jughead sits up straighter and cracks his back in three neat pops. “You went with them then?” 

When Sabrina first arrived, Veronica went out of her way to adopt the recent addition from Greendale. However, Sabrina sets Jughead on edge. He cannot pinpoint what it is exactly, but it is like she has a sixth sense about her, like she always keeps an eye on everything around her. For someone who prefers to blend into the background and move about unnoticed, Jughead doesn’t enjoy it.

“I didn’t want Betty to feel like the third wheel,” Sabrina informs him, and he can sense the accusation in her tone.

He closes his laptop. There is less than ten percent left on his battery anyway. He doesn’t like what she implies, like she knows his relationship with Betty better than he does. “Betty understands when I need time to write,” he excuses, sliding his laptop into his messenger bag. Checking his phone for the time, he sees another three messages from Betty. It is almost midnight. He must have been deeper inside his head than he thought. 

He curses under his breath, and then remembers Sabrina across from him and sobers up. “They didn’t come with you?”

She sighs, sinking into the vinyl and bracing her hands on the seat where he cannot see them. “Archie and Veronica had other ideas about the rest of their evening,” she supplies with raised eyebrows, and he can finish that thought on his own. “Betty, I think she was pretty tired after the movie. I asked if she wanted to stop here for a snack, but she didn’t have a lot of energy left, if you know what I mean.”

He doesn’t know. Or he doesn’t want to know. He isn’t a fan of people who talk in vagaries or double meanings. That is all fine and well on the page, but in real company, it is bad manners. 

Betty would have known he was here, though. Did she not want to see him? He presses the home button on his phone again and looks at the last message she sent. _Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?_ A hopeful heart at the end and a goodnight. Not mad at him. At least, not spitting angry with him. He cannot tell, honestly, but he definitely senses the disappointment in her text. The pulsing heart has too many connotations. Heart racing affection or the desperate pulse before the final gasp?

Slowly slipping his phone back into his jacket pocket, he picks up his gaze, trying to keep the doubt off his face, but Sabrina is watching him intently. With her chin balanced on prim folded hands, he finds her enigmatic feline smile at once comforting and disconcerting, a cat with a canary, and Jughead is the canary. Yet, with Sabrina he never knows if she will simply bat him around for a bit or make a snack out of him. She did say she came here for a snack. 

She finally gets down to brass tacks. “She misses you.” It feels like blunt force trauma to his chest.

Jughead nods, maintaining his composure as his own pulse speeds up with – maybe shame. He knows in the back of his head it has been a growing problem, but it is always easy to reason with himself that he will see Betty soon enough. Betty understands that sometimes his writing takes precedence.

She often goes out of her way to create the mental space for him to write. When he cannot write at the trailer or there are no seats left at the diner, she lets him type away at her desk in her bedroom (with the door open of course, per Alice’s compromise). It is never entrapment either. She never tries to bogart his attention or distract him. While she reads on the bed or finishes her homework, she lets him write without interruption, and he loves her for it, sometimes to point of madness because this is madness. Writing so much that he misses not one or two but eight texts in a day is pure madness. Loving her through his writing and never actually loving her is lunacy.

Sweeping his hands across his face, he groans. “I miss her, too.” With his fingers pressed over his mouth, he regards Sabrina across the tabletop. Her expression has not changed, not a whit of sympathy, which is fine. He probably does not deserve it.

Then, something occurs to him. If there was a problem, Betty would have told him. She hasn’t said anything about it yet, and he trusts her. If she was unhappy with his behavior, he trusts her to tell him.

Nudging his spent coffee mug to the edge of the table, Sabrina suddenly intercepts it with a quiet, “Can I?”

“Can you what?” 

“Read your grounds. It’s kind of like reading tea leaves,” she supplies, sliding his mug towards her.

He snorts but decides to humor her. While she reads his grounds, he starts devising a plan for tomorrow. It is Halloween. He screwed up tonight, but he can make it up to Betty tomorrow.

His mother used to sing a song to his little sister about the blessing of tomorrow, something from some musical about an orphan, Oliver Twist or Annie or whatever. Jellybean loved it, and for days she would sing it to herself. He feels the earworm wriggle its way into his brain now, his little sister belting out _tomorrow_ in his head while Sabrina reads his future or karma or family tree. Maybe he needs to go find his bed. 

She hums, considering the mysteries she finds at the bottom of his mug. Doe eyes return his mild interest as she tips the mug towards him. 

“See here? On opposite edges of the cup, two almost identical crowns. Almost identical being key, two sides of the same coin,” she explains, pointing into the mug.

He looks at the crumble of grounds, and sure there are two nondescript clumps on either side of the mug, but he would not call them crowns.

“And there, the broken line down the middle. The barrier between them.” She draws an imaginary one with her index finger, bisecting the opening of the mug. The one she refers to is a wobbly suggestion of a line, he concedes with not a little skepticism. The grounds remind him of those pictures in biology textbooks where they illustrate two cartoon cells splitting by – what was it called – fission. 

“Okay, what does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Sabrina concludes unhelpfully, letting the mug tip back to rest flat on the tabletop. Jughead’s exhale is mildly irritated, but he tells himself it is because he needs to go to bed.

Then, Sabrina adds, “Maybe there are two parts of yourself that you haven’t been able to reconcile yet. Maybe you feel like you’re being torn in two directions, and something is forcing you to come to terms with it, hence the broken line.”

He smiles, getting the joke. Pushing the mug back to the edge of the table, he asks her point-blank, “What did Betty tell you?”

Sabrina’s distinctive eyebrows knit together in confusion. “What do you mean?” 

“Is she mad at me? Because I didn’t respond to her texts?”

She looks like she is holding something back, but she repeats her earlier words, playing her hand close to the chest. “All I said was that she misses you.”

It is admirable but telling. She is not the type to spill what someone else might have confided to her, and while he applauds her for her discretion, he wonders if it goes both ways.

He sighs all the air from his lungs and deflates into the seat. It feels like it has been days since he talked to Betty, really talked, and more since he really saw her. The last time they spoke, she helped him flesh out an idea for a modern retelling of Poe’s _The Fall of the House of Usher_ , and then he disappeared inside of the story. He has been living inside it of that fantasy for the better part of this past week, and while he can easily recall the last paragraph he typed, he cannot remember the last time he kissed his girlfriend.

“Crap,” he swears. “I should’ve gone to the movie tonight,” he confesses quietly, almost afraid to say it too loud for fear a giant gaping abyss of guilt will open up beneath the table and suck him into the bad place, wherever terrible boyfriends go.

Jughead swipes his beanie off his head and self-consciously rakes his nails through his hair. Staring down into his empty crown, he cannot help admitting, “Sometimes I do wish there were two of me.” 

He yanks his beanie back on with another huff, shaking his head. “I know I can be really narrow-minded. It’s hard for me to let myself get distracted when I want to write something. I just don’t want to waste it because when writer’s block hits, it really hits,” he rambles, knowing he is making excuses for himself. “It would be perfect if I could be in two places at once sometimes. One could write and the other could be with Betty in the way she needs.” 

Sabrina listens without interruption and nods, if not in agreement then at least in acknowledgment. Sensing he is finished feeling sorry for himself, she proposes, “Sounds like you need to find a happy medium.”

* * *

Jughead wakes up with a splitting headache and blames it on the caffeine. He finds nothing favorable about mornings, bleached sunlight and the cold air outside his covers chapping any bit of bare skin it can find. Well, maybe if Betty was in bed with him. He could make an exception there. Nothing compared to mornings in bed with Betty if they could get away with it. 

Stumbling into the bathroom with his eyes closed, he reminds himself to replace the curtains. His fingers trip over the sink, finding the knobs through muscle memory alone. Drinking straight from the faucet, he considers duct taping spare blankets over the windows and going back to sleep.

A motorcycle roars from the opposite lot outside. Men shout at one another, and someone kills the engine. More shouting ensues and the engine growls back to life, revving once, twice, someone cranking on the accelerator.

Jughead pinches the blinds apart and spots five men standing in his neighbor’s yard. There are three motorcycles evenly spaced around them. At the foot of each are the gaping mouths of open toolboxes and grease-stained rags. The tableau is completed by two large Coleman coolers and a line of lawn chairs giving the whole scene a lived-in feel. It tells Jughead that his opportunity to sleep-in went spinning out with the first twist of the accelerator.

He lets the blinds snap closed and reaches for his toothbrush. Maybe this is the kick in the ass he needs. He really should get a head start and call Betty before she makes the first move. Based on his brief conversation with Sabrina last night, he has a lot of catching up to do.

There is an abrupt knock on the bathroom door. In the bathroom mirror, Jughead spots his dad’s dark head poking through the door. “Hey, I thought you said you were going to pick up some more milk.” 

Jughead spits into the sink. “First I’m hearing about it.”

His father gives him an odd look and then tells him, “I left some money on the counter. Let me get a list together.”

“Oh, it’s a list now?”

“Well, I figured since you hadn’t left yet, I checked to see if we needed anything else. Why, you have plans?”

Jughead waves him off. “No, I’ll do it.” There are enough hours in the day for Jughead to finish a few errands. He can shoot Betty a text to meet him at Pop’s for lunch or something. Then, maybe he could get some writing done while he is at it, kill two birds with one stone.

“And Halloween candy, too. Don’t forget,” FP emphasizes, patting the door. He ducks back in with a sharp reminder, “And let’s make sure it makes it into the bowl this time, Jug. The candy is for the kids.”

Jughead gives him a dismissive thumbs up, brushing his tongue obnoxiously in the mirror until his father sighs and leaves. 

When Jughead peeks outside the blinds again, he tracks his father crossing the gravel drive to join the five men. Someone withdraws a fresh can of Genesee from the red Coleman and tosses it to his father, but his dad passes it to the guy next to him. Jughead thinks his day is off to a good start.

That changes when he ends up spending fifteen minutes searching for his phone with no success. He checks the freezer as a last resort because it has ended up there on more than one occasion when Jughead was scrolling mindlessly at two in the morning and scrounging for the last freezer-burned pepperoni Hot Pocket. 

Figuring he left his phone at Pop’s, he uses the last landline at Sunnyside Trailer Park to call Betty, but she doesn’t pick up. Though Veronica ridicules him endlessly for still using his phone as a phone, he leaves Betty a voicemail asking to meet him at Pop’s for lunch, around one thirty, so they will miss the midday rush. 

He pauses, deliberating with himself. It doesn’t seem appropriate to leave over voicemail, but he feels like it needs to be said at least once. He starts into an apology for not being the most present boyfriend in the past week. Tugging on his beanie, he tells her he wants to take her out since it is Halloween. They used to go to the haunted corn maze at Lone Maple Farms every year when they were young, and he thinks that trip down memory lane might be just what they both need.

He also tries to leave an explanation for calling her on the landline, but the messaging system cuts him off just as he tells her he lost his phone – again. Feeling pretty certain the voicemail captured the gist of it, he drops the phone back on the hook.

Jughead swipes the money and list off the counter and goes to put it in his wallet, only to discover that is gone, too. He was positive he had it on him last night. He recalls paying for his burger.

Jesus, he really needs to get better at double-checking the booth before he leaves, but he hopes Pop snagged his phone and wallet before closing. He knows the restaurant owner does a full sweep of the booths before closing up shop every night. _Too many lost wedding rings and stolen credit cards,_ Pop Tate explained. Now every person that had ever lost something at the diner knew if they lost something again and Pop didn’t find it, then it was really gone. 

Checking the time, he thinks he could get through the grocery store, drop off the groceries here at the trailer, and get to Pop’s with maybe an hour to spare. He could get a little more writing done before Betty showed up. It might help him get his head on straight, knock out a few pages, get a couple cups of coffee in his system, though Betty has commented on more than one occasion that he probably drinks too much caffeine.

He gets back to the trailer at around noon. Juggling two large brown bags in the crook of one arm, Jughead presses play on the answering machine. The only messages left are from over a week ago, though. No Betty. 

He could try calling her again, he guesses, opening the fridge door without looking. When he goes to replace the milk on its usual shelf, he finds a gallon already there. He wiggles in the one he just bought and checks the use-by date on the other. It matches the one he picked up this morning. Why did his dad ask him to pick up milk if there was already one in the fridge?

Clicking his tongue, he grabs the errant gallon of milk and slams the fridge door. Jughead snatches a clean glass from the drying tray and pours himself a drink right then and there. There is still a part of himself that cannot let any food go to waste – ever. 

He drinks a pint while he puts the rest of the groceries away. He finds an unopened box of Hot Pockets in the freezer, too, which he was fairly certain were not there yesterday. He needs to work on his situational awareness.

Pouring himself a second glass of milk, he checks the caller ID for any calls from Betty. She might have called and not left a message. There aren’t any from that morning, but maybe she figures he will be at Pop’s anyway. Calling would be superfluous in that case, he reasons. 

Gulping down the second glass, he smacks his lips and checks to see if his dad is still hanging out with the guys across the street. Sure enough, his dad is lounging in one of the lawn chairs. He smirks when his dad points emphatically at one of the motorcycles and starts lecturing one of the guys about something. Jughead can tell it is a can of Coke in the cup holder and not a tallboy of Genesee.

Feeling good about leaving his dad alone with his current company, Jughead grabs his messenger bag and heads for Pop’s.

There is a giddiness building in his stomach, and he wonders if his digestive system is struggling to process all that lactose he just ingested or if he is simply excited to see Betty. It feels like a lot of both.

Betty’s favorite holidays fall between October and December, and she has a tendency to wear something themed for the occasion. He would never say it out loud, only to her, but he is privately fond of her holiday spirit, and he can admit he is curious to see what she might be sporting today.

Pop Tate must have spotted him beelining through the parking lot, because when the little bell dings above his head, there is a steaming mug of coffee waiting for him on the counter in front of his usual stool. He flags down Pop between orders and asks if he left his phone and wallet at the diner the night before, but Pop gives him the bad news. His dad is going to kill him for losing another phone, and he is certain there were at least a few fivers in his wallet. 

That complicates his date plans for later today. There are some leftovers from the grocery money, but definitely not enough to buy Betty lunch. Not a good look since he invited her out, but she will understand, he assures himself. She always understands. With anyone else he would feel like a charity case, but with Betty, he never gets that impression from her. While she assures him there is no point system, he still wishes money was never an issue when he wanted to take her out. It makes the sting of losing his wallet feel even worse.

Instead of commandeering a booth during the lunch rush, Jughead takes a counter stool while he waits for Betty. He cracks open his laptop and boots it up. Nothing pleases him more than a full battery to start a writing session, he thinks, punching in his password and opening up the rough draft from last night.

Jughead loses track of time as the lunch rush rolls through. The bell dings above the door so many times that he starts to tune it out, lets it dissolve into the dull roar of the crowd ebbing and flowing around him, the bodies in the booths and the stools on either side of him turning over one after another.

His fingers move like machines over the keyboard, the words flowing with little pause. It feels like someone cranked the dial on his imagination to eleven as he churns out paragraph after paragraph with nary a blink. By the time he remembers that he is supposed to meet Betty for lunch, he has an entire chapter written.

For shits and grins, he scrolls proudly to the top and takes stock of it, feeling like he has just run a creative marathon. As he skims through the first paragraph, however, his self-confidence wanes.

The words come together in the right way, forming complete sentences, sure. It makes sense. There is clear logic to his thoughts, but something is missing. He finds the prose dead, colorless, lacking something essential. 

Reviewing his draft from last night, the differences become even more conspicuous, almost shamefully so. What he wrote over his first two cups of coffee today seems skeletal and underfed by comparison. 

Betty will be here soon, he assures himself, scanning the next few paragraphs with less enthusiasm. She will look it over and help him point out what needs work, where he could do better. She will breathe some life into the story and steer him in the right direction.

Then, he hears the laughter, and his heart skips a beat. He would not miss that laugh anywhere. He hears it in his dreams.

The tiny clock on his laptop reads one thirty exactly. The diner is much quieter now, otherwise he might not have caught her laugh in the lunch rush din. His eyes search for her, his gaze moving over the vacated booths behind him, gliding over the chrome-lined doors, not finding her. His eyes drift further down the line of booths on the opposite side of the diner, and then he relaxes, relief finding him when he spots the perfect spiral of her ponytail bobbing over the red seatback. His heart skips a beat when he hears her laugh again, and he wonders if the day will ever come when his heart doesn’t do that just at the sound of her laughter.

But, that is not all he sees. Archie and Veronica are in the seat opposite her and laughing along to whatever joke, but Jughead isn’t really looking at that. He cannot tear his eyes away from the back of the head of the person sitting next to Betty.

She turns to look at the person, her eyes soft and fond in profile, an expression he thought she reserved for him. Then, she leans over and presses a quick and tender kiss to the cheek of the man sitting next to her, patting the spot afterwards like she always does, like she wants to seal the affection where she left it.

Jughead feels something heavy and leaden drop in his gut, splashing messily in the burning acidity of the coffee in his belly. He snaps his laptop closed and continues to watch the scene, feeling out of body, feeling like the length of the diner stretches for an eternity between himself and the booth, his friends, Betty, the usurper. Is this why she didn’t return his call this morning, why she didn’t come to the diner to find him last night, because of this dark-haired stranger she met at the Bijoux, because Jughead couldn’t be bothered to put down his writing for one evening and spend some time with her?

Jughead bites the inside of his cheek and winces, tasting iron. He thinks about that pulsing heart in her last text message, the urgency in it, the hidden message he couldn’t see then but feels throbbing in his chest now.

The man’s head swivels towards Betty with another remark that makes her giggle, and Jughead startles, pinching himself on instinct. Breaking skin and hissing, Jughead realizes he is sitting in the stool at the service counter and not in the booth on the other end of the diner. But, that can’t be possible because he swears that is him sitting next to Betty. The usurper has his face.


	2. identity crisis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the wonderful feedback on the first chapter! I'm always intrigued by your thoughts, what stands out, what feelings are evoked. It is immensely encouraging, so again, thank you, I appreciate it!
> 
> Beta help and most valuable feedback kindly provided by the charming _ArsenicPanda_ <3
> 
> I hope you enjoy this next installment, and I wish you all a healthy and happy Halloween!

Jughead’s hand grasps for the first person unlucky enough to be within reaching distance, and he reels in none other than Dilton Doiley on his way back to his booth from the bathroom. 

“Hands to yourself, Jones,” Dilton snaps, trying to tug his shirt from Jug’s blind desperation.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Jughead rambles manically, snapping his fingers at Dilton. “Can I borrow your phone?”

Dilton glares at the claw latched onto his shirt and back up at Jughead. “No magic word,” he muses, giving up on physically trying to get out of this snag.

Jughead notices his hand, rigid with panic. He wills the emotional tetanus to leave the limb and releases the kid’s shirt with a noncommittal _sorry_. “I’m not feeling great,” he confesses, which might be his empty stomach or the thing he just saw on the other end of the diner.

He tries to corral his scrambling thoughts, grasping for any one that sounds the most coherent, and settles on one, hoping it makes as much sense in practice as it does inside his head. “I need to call someone to pick me up,” he excuses, holding his palm out for Dilton’s phone.

“What are you talking about? Your friends are right,” Dilton begins, his gaze floating to the other end of the diner, his voice dying on cue. “Wait.”

“You see him too?” Jughead exclaims, glancing over his shoulder and confirming that yes, that is his doppelganger slinging his arm along Betty’s shoulders. _Real smooth, asshole_ , he scorns privately.

He turns back to Dilton with another appeal for his phone, but Jughead knows tugging at the kid’s moral fibers and trying to shake out a bit of common courtesy or a crumb of mercy has about a fifty-fifty chance of success. Dilton continues to gape at the doppelganger, ignoring Jughead’s distress.

“Phone, Doiley, please. Pretty fucking please with cherries on top,” Jughead begs, and sweetens the deal further. “I’ll buy you milkshakes for a week.” The exchange hardly seems equivalent, but Jughead needs to confirm something for himself.

He waves a hand in front of Dilton’s unblinking eyes, as if the kid is afraid to look away and miss the moment when reality recalibrates and the exact replica of Jughead Jones disappears forever. Dilton closes his mouth with a click of teeth, glancing back and forth between the Jughead in front of him and whatever that thing is on the other end of the diner. He unlocks his phone and warily hands it to the real Jughead because _he is_ _the real Jughead_. He must be, he reasons, clinging to that flimsy resolve as he dials his own number. 

His heart shudders with each expectant ring through the receiver as he watches the other end of the diner, waiting to confirm all his worst fears. Sure enough, Jughead and Dilton observe the doppelganger pull out Jug’s cell phone and answer the call.

Jughead hears his own voice on the other end, his voice as it has always been, and immediately hangs up. He wonders if someone can die of panic, feeling like he might throw up his lungs right now. He hopes it will be a closed casket for his petrified corpse because his face feels frozen in horror.

“Holy shit,” he breathes in disbelief, handing the phone back to Dilton but not really feeling the movement. His limbs feel like separate-minded extensions on his body, like they do not belong to him anymore, but then his terror melts into sudden outrage. He tightens his grip on Dilton’s cell phone just as the kid tries to take it back. “That bastard stole my phone!”

“He stole more than your phone, Jones,” Dilton notes, staring at the other Jughead with horrified curiosity now, who puts his phone away and says something to Betty. It is an apology by the looks of it because she smiles and shakes her head before resting it on his shoulder, clinging to the double in that way Jughead always enjoys, soft and warm against his arm.

Dilton tries to pry the phone from his hand, but Jughead is preoccupied with glaring at the back of the usurper’s head. Dilton groans, tapping on the back of his knuckles, and Jughead drops the phone into Dilton’s waiting hand. 

The double curls his hand over the smooth round of Betty’s shoulder, his thumb moving up and over the juncture of her neck and working at that spot, that spot at once tense and tender, his favorite spot that makes Betty melt into him.

“I feel like someone slipped acid in my soda,” Dilton murmurs to himself but then adds with faux cheer. “Hey, at least you got the hat.”

“What do I do? How did this happen?” Jug wonders listlessly, unable to peel his eyes from the scene in front of him.

Seeming to have reached the fifth stage of grief well before Jughead, Dilton accepts the presence of his doppelganger at face value. Now, he looks at the double with impartial interest. “Have you traveled back in time recently?”

His tone is so rational, Jughead wants to punch him in the face. “What? No.” Then, he pauses, thinking on it. “I don’t think I did.”

“Well, the you right now wouldn’t know, but if the future you did, then he or you created a time-paradox duplicate,” Dilton explains. 

“Wait, like in _Back to the Future_?” 

Doiley nods. “It could be that, but then it could be a lot of other things. Have you recently donated your DNA to one of those scam ancestry sites?” Dilton continues, and Jughead just knows this is something the kid has thought heavily about on his own time. But, there is meddlesome intent in his speculations that sets off some red flags. He talks like he is devising an agenda of experiments.

Jughead can see the question forming on Dilton’s face and immediately cuts him off. “No, I am not going to be your science experiment.”

Dilton presses his tongue into the back of his teeth in disappointment. “Fine, but I don’t think you understand what this means. This could be a great opportunity for the both of us.”

Dilton is about to launch into an explanation for some scientific competition whose deadline is coming up, but then Jughead gets his _aha!_ moment. “The hat!”

Chafed from the interruption, Dilton offers a bored, “Okay?”

Jughead sweeps his beanie off his head and shakes it in the direction of the doppelganger. “That’s not me. It can’t be me. See, I have the hat, therefore I am the real Jughead!”

Dilton sighs. “I’m not sure that should be your main concern, Jones.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, I can’t say for sure, but these types of things usually end one way.” Dilton points out his extensive knowledge in most things science fiction, arguing with no one that this justifies his opinion on the matter. 

Jughead is not a science fiction tyro by any stretch, and while he is not one-hundred percent any of that applies here, he is taking all theories at the moment. “Yeah?”

“One of you has to go.”

“What do you mean?”

Without emotion, Dilton draws his index finger across his throat. 

Jughead blanches. “That’s, um, don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?” 

“Maybe,” Dilton cedes with a cavalier shrug. “Guess we’ll find out eventually.” 

Maybe Jughead is jumping to conclusions. “Maybe I should go up there. Maybe it’s just some guy that looks like me. I bet up close he doesn’t look like me at all,” he reasons, looking back at the double once more and trying to find some deviation, but he is too far away to make out any details to support his claim.

Dilton sighs, considering this possibility, but then he grabs Jug’s shoulders and levels with him. “Which is the more likely scenario, Jones? That Betty is cheating on you? Or you have a double trying to steal your life?” 

Dilton throws another contemplative look at the other Jughead. “Besides I got a good look at him earlier. The spitting image, which SOL for you,” Doiley provides unhelpfully. He gives Jughead one last pitying look, claps him on the shoulder, and then unceremoniously abandons him to figure it out by himself.

* * *

Jughead gets lucky. Betty and the usurper leave the diner first. While Veronica picks up the tab, Jughead slides into the seat opposite his oldest best friend.

Archie’s mouth is full of the last bite of his cheeseburger. His swallow looks borderline painful, but the following smile is warm, welcoming, none the wiser. “Did you forget something?”

“Arch, something is happening,” he provides, sounding absurdly ominous to his own ears.

Archie throws him a predictably confused look, and Jughead scolds himself. His best friend is many things, loyal and good-natured without an ill-intended bone in his over-sculpted body, but innuendo was never Archie’s forte.

“That guy who was here before, that ‘other’ Jughead, that wasn’t me,” he tries, and Archie still doesn’t follow.

Jughead notes the plates on the table. The double’s plate was practically licked clean. There is at least one shared trait between them, the real Jughead cedes, and then remembers his own building hunger. He starts grazing off the uneaten fries from Betty’s plate. He might be able to think more clearly with some food in his belly.

“What are you talking about, Jug? You were just here,” Archie informs him, moving to gather Veronica’s coat and effects.

Jughead vehemently disagrees, twisting in his seat and pointing a fry toward his vacated stool at the service counter. “I was there the whole time. At first, I thought maybe I was dissociating or something, but even Dilton Doiley saw him. I was sitting right there, and that ‘guy’ was here at the same time.” He makes air quotes with two fries to emphasize his point.

Veronica rejoins the table, beckoning Archie to help her into her coat. She notices Jughead and repeats Archie’s earlier question, sensing nothing out of the ordinary. “Jughead, did you forget something?” 

Archie stands up and slips her wool coat over her shoulders. He gives Jughead an unsettled side-eye. “Um, Jug, I’m not sure I follow.”

“Follow what?” Veronica inquires curiously, buttoning the front of her coat. She arches a single distinctive brow in Jughead’s direction, her unsaid demand for more details.

Jughead swallows the bolus of cold French fries he just piled into his mouth. He doesn’t know how to say it without sounding ridiculous. Saying it to Archie before didn’t make it sound anymore real. “I think someone is trying to steal my identity.”

“Did you cancel your credit cards?” Veronica suggests, visibly relaxing like she expected the end of the world. She turns her face just slightly, but Jughead catches the eyeroll, as if in typical Jones fashion Jughead was making a mountain out of a mole hill. “You should really call your bank and get that squared away as soon as possible.”

Jughead groans, covering his face with his hands.

Firstly, he does not own a credit card and probably never will. Secondly, no one is reacting to this predicament in the way he needs.

His mind runs through a million worst case scenarios, jump started by Dilton’s ludicrous theories. Maybe Dilton was right, and he accidentally traveled back in time. Now faced with the doppelganger paradox, the universe will snuff out one of the existing Jugheads. He really hopes it doesn’t end up being him. 

Or his evil doppelganger escaped from the Black Lodge. Or a mad scientist cloned him and plans to use his double to take over Riverdale. Maybe it is a demon wearing his identity like a person suit.

He wants to bounce some ideas off these two but knows they are probably the last two people he should go to with this problem. He really needs Betty for this. She would believe him in a second, and she would help him rationalize it. Better, she would help him get to the truth of it, but his evil double has effectively isolated him from the one person who can help him make sense of this debacle. _Like it knows_.

Veronica raises both eyebrows at him now, still waiting for a rational explanation, but Jughead doesn’t have one.

Then, it hits him. Gaping up at Veronica and Archie, he cannot believe he didn’t think of it first. Maybe his wish to Sabrina came true. Maybe she created an evil Jughead that stole his phone and manipulated his girlfriend, an evil Jughead that will probably try to steal his entire life, all to punish him for being a bad boyfriend. _Holy shit_.

He launches himself out of the booth, and both Veronica and Archie take a wary step back. “Do you know where Sabrina lives?” Jughead asks, practically demands.

Veronica gives him an incredulous look, losing his train of thought. “You think Sabrina stole your identity?”

She is ten steps behind him, and Jughead cannot help snapping, “No, I think she split my identity.” He slings his messenger bag over his shoulder. His gut tells him Sabrina has something to do with this phenomenon, and his gut has never steered him wrong.

“What?” Now Veronica is goggling at him.

“Archie can tell you,” Jughead supposes, waving vaguely at the confounded redhead. He does not have time to explain things twice. Archie might not have fully processed what Jughead told him, but he bets the redhead could paraphrase what he said and Veronica would make the leap herself.

Archie shrugs and shakes his head. “I have no idea what he’s going on about.” Or not.

“Is this another one of your weird conspiracy theories that end up going nowhere?” Veronica presumes, but her tone is deceptively gentle, taking on a Betty-like quality because Betty is the only one who can cajole Jughead into taking off his tinfoil hat and rejoining them in the realm of reason. “No one is putting nanobot tracers in the drinking water, Jughead. Certainly not Sabrina Spellman, a teenage girl from Greendale. We’ve gone over this.” 

Growing more frustrated, Jughead launches into a rushed explanation of last night’s events. “No, she was here last night. She came here after the movie, and I was here writing. I,” he stops, feeling unbelievably stupid.

Veronica purses her lips at him in a way that is both sympathetic and patronizing.

He deflates, mulling the admission over his teeth. “I made a wish, okay,” he discloses like it is some big reveal. Veronica, however, does not comprehend its gravity, prompting him for clarification. “I wanted to be in two places at once, and then I came here, now, and I saw myself with you and Archie and Betty in this booth, but I was over there.” He points at the service counter once more. “Dilton Doiley saw it, too. He can tell you.”

Bless her heart, it finally clicks with Veronica what Jughead is implying.

“Here, call my phone,” he urges her. “That thing has my phone.”

Veronica humors him and digs her phone out of her purse. “This is crazy, Jones, even for you. Is Betty in on this?”

She scans the diner for a sneaky blonde ponytail peeking out from behind any corners.

Punching the six on her phone, she holds the receiver up to her ear. Jughead wonders what he did to deserve being number six on her speed dial. Or what he did to deserve being any number on her speed dial, but there isn’t any time to rib her for it.

After several rings, Veronica’s face suddenly twists in alarm, and she tears the phone away from her ear, hanging up. Dropping her phone back into her purse, she wonders, “Were you the one that called earlier?”

“I needed to be sure,” Jughead reasons.

“What’s happening?” Archie interjects, feeling out of the loop. “Who picked up the phone? Did someone steal your phone, Jug?”

“This is crazy,” Veronica marvels, literally clutching her pearls. “You were right here with us. It was you.” 

Jughead nods, relieved that someone finally believes him, moreso someone that might actually help him. “Yes, and I think Sabrina is involved.”

“Just because she was here with you last night when you made some random wish?” Veronica wonders with healthy skepticism. 

“It might be coincidence. It might not, but I don’t think it would hurt to start with her,” Jughead reasons. “Do you know where she lives?”

“You’re going alone,” Veronica balks, more incredulity that is beginning to grate on Jughead’s nerves.

He thinks this is the most solid theory in the growing list of madcap theories bouncing around in his brain. Time travel feels a little out of his wheelhouse and clinging to this one is giving him a modicum of mental stability.

“No, Jughead, you are not going to go and accost some poor girl about your mad theory about doppelgangers and spells and witchcraft.” Veronica gets a hold of the front of his jacket just in case he decides to make a run for it. “At least, not alone. We know how you can be when you’re in interrogation-mode.”

“Fine, we’ll go together,” he amends. “You know her better than I do anyway.”

Veronica’s sigh is brimming with doubt, still unsold on how Sabrina caused this conundrum, let alone how she might be involved at all. The brunette probably thinks Jughead brought this upon himself somehow.

Jughead compromises, “I won’t say a word. You can ask _all_ the questions.”

Veronica seems to like that arrangement better because Jughead is able to shake his jacket out of her hands. He even gestures for her to lead the way, but just as the bell rings above their heads, Archie, still standing next to their booth with the uncleared plates and half-drunk milkshakes, asks the most important question, “What about Betty?” 

Both Veronica and Jughead stutter-step to a stop, the bell ringing twice in judgment above their heads. _What about Betty_?

Jughead presses his palm to his forehead. He cannot believe he didn’t think of it first. Betty is with that cad and doesn’t even know it. His punishment should not be Betty’s too.

Turning to Veronica, he revises their original plan. “You two should go hunt down Sabrina. I’ll find Betty and get her away from that thing.”

Veronica looks like she wants to argue and reverse their tasks. It probably isn’t a good idea for the two Jugheads to confront each other, but then Veronica also thinks it is a bad idea to give Jughead the chance to accost Sabrina on his own. However, the _real Jughead_ has no plans to let the fake Jughead see him. The _real Jughead_ does not want to provoke whatever paradoxical whiplash that might create with the universe.

Instead, Veronica does not voice her own modifications to the plan but intimates almost hesitantly, “I really could not tell the difference.”

Jughead plants himself on the edge of one of the tables. “With what?”

“Between you and the – the other one. I mean, he wasn’t as twitchy as you are. And for once we went an entire meal without any rants or pop culture references, which was a breath of fresh air to be honest, but he was still Jughead,” Veronica explains.

“That should’ve been your first red flag,” Jughead alleges. “If I don’t make even one pop culture or literary reference in conversation, then that is _not_ me. Also.” He points emphatically to his beanie. “In what reality would I not have this?” 

Archie leans over and quietly admits to his girlfriend that he thought it was weird, too. Veronica gives the same excuse his double did, that he somehow lost his favorite and ever-present security blanket, which the real Jughead would never be caught dead without.

“You’re talking about him like he is evil.” The brunette sounds concerned, but Jughead thinks she should be more worried about what that thing might be doing with Betty. There is nothing to fear from the real Jughead. “We don’t know that for sure, so I’m just a little worried about you going by yourself,” she points out, and then adds, “Also how do we know you’re not the evil one?”

Jughead scoffs, a bit offended by the accusation. “That one’s easy,” he says flippantly and gestures at Archie. “Arch, you tried joining the swim team freshman year, but you realized you couldn’t spend too much time in the pool without needing to pee constantly, so you quit the team, which according to Coach Kleats was a real shame since you were on track for the best IM on the team. I only know what an IM is because of you.”

Archie’s face darkens to the exact same shade as his hair, effectively speaking truth to Jughead’s story. Veronica grimaces and gives Jughead a dirty look in her boyfriend’s defense, but Jughead has more important things to worry about right now. “So, there you go, I am the real Jughead.” 

“Just because you’re the real Jughead doesn’t make you the good Jughead,” Veronica reasons, pursing her lips at him in distaste. “You’re definitely not as charming as the other Jughead.” 

Though she means it to be insulting, it does nothing but further solidify his theory that he is the real Jughead. Veronica Lodge would never find Jughead Jones _charming_. 

“Look, I’m not going to walk straight up to the guy and accuse him of stealing my life, Veronica. That’s something an insane person would do,” he justifies, and she does not look the least bit convinced. He continues despite her suspicions because, well, bigger fish to fry. “Besides, we have no idea what that thing is capable of. I’m just trying to keep Betty safe. Isn’t that what you want, too?”

“Of course,” Veronica defends readily.

Jughead nods along and waves his hand at the obvious. “See, we’re on the same page. You go find Sabrina. I’ll find Betty and get her away from the _other_ Jughead. There, I didn’t say evil.”

Figuring everything that needs to be said has been said, Jughead turns to leave only to stop again when the bell rings above his head. The door falling closed with another judgmental ding, Jughead sheepishly looks over his shoulder. “Um, you wouldn’t happen to know where they went?” 

* * *

The doppelganger takes Betty to the haunted corn maze at Lone Maple Farms, and the real Jughead seethes. That was his idea. The bastard stole his idea. It was supposed to be him, him taking Betty on their trip down memory lane, him buying Betty a caramel apple and eating half of it, him holding Betty’s hand as they receive their scavenger hunt clues from the skeleton-faced usher at the maze entrance.

Using the money he borrowed from Veronica, Jughead buys his own ticket at the kiosk and trails a few bodies behind Betty and the double. Unfortunately, the usher stops him at the entrance with an over-friendly greeting. “Hi! Are you waiting on a group or going solo?”

Trying to keep a bead on Betty, he barely acknowledges the usher. “Oh, um, my friends are already in there,” he lies, tracking Betty’s ponytail in the bustling crowd. If he loses them now, there is a good chance he will not find them again once they are in the maze.

The usher hands him one of the papers anyway. “Please take one just in case you don’t find them. We don’t want you getting lost. It’s easy to get turned around in there,” the usher explains, the skeleton smile painted on her face expanded further by her actual smile, giving it a surreal effect, a grin on top of a grin.

Jughead has done this enough times to know they alternate about five or six different lists, but it was always more fun to disregard the clues and simply run around inside the maze like chickens with their heads cut off. Then, when they would get tired or hungry, usually the latter, and fold into another group, following them out.

It riles him up all over again to think he won’t get to do that with Betty tonight. The doppelganger gets to hold Betty’s hand and get purposefully lost inside the maze, gets to feign terror as they evade ghouls with chainsaws and click-click-slides creeping out from the corn stalks. Jughead had plans of his own, hoped to pull Betty aside at some point, maybe in the rotating tunnel. He wondered how good it would feel to have the world tilting on its axis around them and kiss her at the same time, her mouth the still point, so much weight into the railings and each other.

_Bastard,_ he snipes in his head, accepting the paper from the usher with a forced smile. 

It isn’t until he is standing just past the entrance to the maze that he realizes he lost Betty. The crowd shifts around him, shoulders brushing his own as he anxiously scans the throng of bobbing and swaying heads ahead of him for that characteristic crown of blonde hair. He swears under his breath, looking down at the list of clues and seeing hieroglyphics.

Cinching his eyes shut and taking a deep breath, he crumples the paper in his hands. This never would have happened if he had gone to the movies Friday night with his girlfriend. The next time Betty asks him to go to the movies with her, he is going to set ten reminders in his damned phone. Remembering he lost that, too, he makes one tiny adjustment. Instead, he will take seven post-it notes numbered one through seven and pin them to the front of his shirt. Wearing his forgetfulness like a scarlet letter, each day he will remove a note until he gets down to the one with a footer reminding him of the time and place he is supposed to be. That will teach him to space out on his girlfriend. 

He looks up at the night sky, at the very full, very blue, hunter’s moon. That might be his one saving grace tonight, that singular spotlight in the sky illuminating the entire maze. He knows the chances of finding her grow slimmer with every passing second, but if he is going to find her at all, it will be by the grace of that once-in-a-lifetime moon.

_Get your shit together, Jones_. He stashes the crumpled clues in a passing stranger’s backpack and heads off into the maze. Though it is probably a fool’s errand, Jughead would never forgive himself if he didn’t at least try. Betty would never give up on him and neither would he.

A swamp creature rises from a staged pond feature as if Jughead set off a motion sensor. It opens its muddy maw at him, letting out a ghoulish moan. Jughead ignores the frightening charade and asks the creature, hoping it's an actor, if he saw a girl with a blonde ponytail come through with a guy that looked like him.

By the monster’s blank stare, Jughead is about to cut his losses and try a different direction when it lifts its scaly arm and points further down the path. “They went that way.”

Jughead thanks him with a two-fingered salute and continues down the path.

He wanders for about twenty minutes, marching determinedly down the paths with his eyes peeled for that iconic ponytail. At one point, a hooded Jason flushes a herd of people in his direction, and Jughead has to duck into a train car to evade them. This leads him into a game of chicken with a mad scientist wielding a very large, very pointy syringe. The lab-coated fiend jabs it at him in challenge, blocking his path through the train car.

Jughead glares at him and snatches the syringe out of his hands. “I’m looking for someone, a girl with blonde hair, ponytail, yay high, improbably beautiful. Probably with a guy who looked just like me,” he says, pointing at his face.

“You know, it’s no fun when you don’t play along,” the scientist gripes, but he steps aside to let Jughead pass. “They went towards the rotating tunnel, on your right. Give me back my syringe.”

Jughead calmly places it in the actor’s gloved hand and tells him, “For what it’s worth, great costume-work.”

He gestures at the bulky butyl gloves and his blood-splattered lab coat. It is a mixture of bright fresh blood and older, browner stains that make it seem more authentic. Jughead can appreciate someone who pays attention to the finer details of their craft. Now, if he could apply that principle to his relationship with Betty, Jughead thinks he would have a lot fewer problems in his life, namely this one. 

He hops down from the train car and turns right. The path is empty of people, which means the mad scientist was doing a very good job of deterring revelers from this neck of the woods without the right clue from the list. 

Then, he sees her, her hair luminescent silver in the bright moonlight. The doppelganger releases her hand and disappears down one path to test out their next move, leaving Betty alone in the intersection.

Jughead abducts the opportunity, literally, rushing up from behind and ambushing her. Wrapping his arms around her, he hauls Betty away into the corn. She kicks and thrashes about, and a part of him is proud of her spunk and another begging future forgiveness for resorting to manhandling her just to get her away from the doppelganger.

He hears the beginnings of her scream and automatically claps his hand over her mouth. She sinks her teeth into the meat of his palm, though, and Jughead yanks his hand back, yowling himself as he releases her. The heel of her hand cuffs him on the side of the head, and she barely gives him time to recover from that before her fist lands squarely on his solar plexus. All the air leaving him, he nearly buckles to his knees. Gasping, Jughead bends over to hold his stomach, partially to protect himself from any more blows.

“Betty, it’s me,” he grinds out. He reasons with himself that he asked for it, but he didn’t know how else to get her away from the double without alerting the devil’s thing itself. 

“Jughead, oh my god,” she exclaims, placing her hand on his shoulder. He shushes her gently, still trying to catch his breath.

“What the hell?” She chides, quieter this time but not knowing why. “I thought you said you were going to see if we could find a way out. Sneaking up on someone in a haunted corn maze is not a good idea for a joke.”

“Yeah, I know,” he concedes airily. “Great response time, by the way.”

His right ear is still ringing from her boxing him on the side of the head. If she had got him square, she probably would have ruptured his eardrum. He stands up with some difficulty, cradling his stomach. Maybe he could have been a little more tactful in his approach. This was how Houdini died.

“Also, not a joke.” He reaches for her but thinks better of it for now. Instead, he gestures for her to follow him deeper into the rows in case the doppelganger comes back and hears them. She hesitates for a moment, but he hears her shoes crunching behind him.

When he feels they are far enough, he turns and levels with her. “I need to tell you something, and I need you to believe me. It will sound crazy at first, but please listen, and then I will show you. Okay?”

“Okay,” she accepts with not a little skepticism, and then concern warm in her eyes. “Are you okay? I know I got you pretty good.”

He smiles. God, he loves her. “I’ll live.”

She does not quite believe him, glancing at the arm braced across his thrashed stomach, but she asks him what is so important that he had to drag her kicking and screaming into the corn.

“You aren’t here with me,” he starts and then rolls his eyes at himself. That didn’t sound right. “I mean, that’s not me.” He points at the path behind her. “That guy who took you here, that’s not me. He must be my double or something. I don’t know how it happened or why, but that isn’t me.”

Betty’s brow furrows in confusion, her head shaking ever so slightly as she tries to process this information. For a moment, he is hopeful she will believe him, but then they both hear it, someone shouting Betty’s name, someone who sounds exactly like Jughead. Her eyes widen in alarm, her ponytail whipping to the side as she glances over her shoulder. Jughead feels he is losing her, but he refrains from reaching for her, her hand, her shoulder, her ponytail. She needs to see, he realizes, and then maybe she will believe.

“Here,” the real Jughead bids, grasping Betty’s hand, waiting a beat to see if she is okay with it, and then leading her back to the path. “I’ll show you.”

She follows him, but he can feel the hesitancy in her hand, the subtle resistance. “Juggie,” she whispers uncertainly, fear tinging her voice. “What’s going on?” 

The doppelganger yells her name again, and the real Jughead raises his finger to his lips, bidding her to be as quiet as possible as they sneak back to the path. He lets them get close enough so she can see the other Jughead pacing around the intersection and shouting for Betty. The other maze-goers give him a wide berth, shaking their heads when he asks some of them if they have seen his girlfriend. The double gives weirdly accurate and detailed descriptions of Betty that make her tighten her hold on his hand.

“Jughead,” she murmurs again, tugging him backward. “What is going on?”

He turns and corrals her back into the corn. Her eyes are stuck on the doppelganger, and he can see the gears and cogs grinding in her head.

“I don’t know,” he confesses. He draws her gaze to his, trying to project some reassurance through his eyes, in his hold on her hand as he strokes the soft space between thumb and forefinger. This is what he does when she is stressed, and he hopes that makes him the more believable choice.

“Veronica and Archie are trying to find out right now, but I made some stupid wish to Sabrina last night, and then that thing appeared,” he explains, waving abstractly behind him.

Betty balks. “Sabrina? What wish? Who is that?”

Jughead shrugs and offers up a lukewarm, “My evil clone or something?”

“What? He’s not like that,” Betty maintains, shaking her head again. “He’s – wait, how do I know you’re not the evil Jughead?” 

Jughead sighs, looking up at the harvest moon. This is turning out to be his least favorite game of the day, this never-ending process of elimination. “Okay, remember when we were eight years old, and you fell off the top of the slide at Wilbury Park? You scraped your elbow, and now there’s a scar in the shape of a --.”

“Moon,” someone finishes behind him. “It’s a crescent moon.”

_Shit._ Strangely he feels he owes Veronica an apology first and foremost because he promised her this would not happen.

He can sense the change in Betty’s demeanor instantly, her hand sliding from his own as she crosses her arms and backs away. She backs away from both Jugheads, though, which he can count as a mild positive, and he catches her fingers stroking the spot on her elbow beneath her cable-knit sweater where the scar remains. A second small positive.

Jughead rounds on the doppelganger. “How do you know that?”

“Why wouldn’t I know that?” The double sustains, squaring his stance, and then he gets a good look at Jughead and his face tightens into horrified surprise. “What the hell.”

“What do you mean, ‘what the hell?’” Jughead shouts, his ire growing. This wasn't supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen. This thing shouldn't exist, and if anyone is allowed to have a problem with that, it's him. 

“If anyone gets to say, ‘what the hell’, it’s me! You’re not the real Jughead!” He accuses, shaking his finger at him. “You tried to steal my life! You broke into my house! You stole my girlfriend! You stole my wallet, my phone! You stole my goddamned face!” He knows the order of his priorities is shot, but it gets the point across, and that makes him feel bolder.

“What the hell are you talking about?” The double exclaims, gaping at Jughead in disbelief. Then, the double points his own accusatory finger at him. “ _You_ broke into my house! You stole my dad’s money off the counter! You stole my laptop! You stole my hat!” He jabs his thumb at his bare head.

“And you have some nerve coming here trying to confuse Betty, too.” The usurper extends a hand for her. “Betty, come here, get away from him. He’s an imposter,” he sneers, his contempt plain.

The real Jughead turns to Betty, making a last-ditch effort to convince her he is the actual Jughead, the true Jughead. “Betty, please, whatever he’s told you, it isn’t true, okay? It’s me, I swear. Look, have you ever seen me without this stupid hat on?” He pleads, taking the hat off and offering it to her.

Betty looks down at the beanie, unmistakable with its frayed crown points and faded grey wool. He never goes anywhere without it. Her green eyes meet his, and he feels his hope returning, that she believes him, that she can see him and _know_ , but then the doppelganger lunges forward and snatches the beanie out of his hand. 

What follows is a blur, the world tumbling away from him in a disorienting spiral of thrashing limbs and cursing and maybe biting, he thinks. At one point, he registers chasing his doppelganger through the corn rows. He doesn’t know where Betty is, but his blood is hot and pulsing and rushing in a single direction. He cannot let that thing get away with it, with his beanie. He won’t let him spirit away with even another sliver of his identity, not without a fight.

When he is finally able to see something besides red, the doppelganger is on top of him trying to wrestle the beanie out of his hands. Jughead keeps a death grip on his crown. He would rather tear it in twain than give it up to this pale imitation. He sees a flash of yellow and blue over the double’s shoulder, a shock of red hair, Archie’s earnest face appearing.

The redhead attempts to break up the fight, pulling on the doppelganger’s shoulder, urging them both to stop. The doppelganger curses at him, wresting away from the hand on his shoulder. “No, this bastard is trying to steal my life!”

Jughead bucks against him, twisting his torso to the side in an effort to wrench the beanie back. “That’s my line, asshole!”

The doppelganger loses his grip on the beanie, and his elbow jerks back directly into Archie’s face. The ginger middleweight reels backward and falls to the ground, knocked out cold.

Any restraint Jughead had before dissolves into pure rage now as he throws all his bodyweight into the doppelganger, tossing him to the side. He reverses their roles, climbing on top of his evil mimic, any lingering mercy or sense of self-control gone. He knows he is shouting a combination of pure gibberish and some of the worst insults of his life, but he does not care anymore. This thing needs to go away forever, and if he needs to be the one to do it, well, so be it.

“Jughead, stop!”

_Betty_. With his hands wrapped around his doppelganger’s neck, Jughead feels the fog of his rage dissipate, seeing his own face purpled in pain. The double’s eyes start to flutter, and Jughead swoons in turn, feeling lightheaded all of a sudden. His grip on the fake’s throat weakens, and he slumps forward, feeling his consciousness slip through his limp fingers.

It is the opening the doppelganger needs, and before Jughead knows it, they are rolling along the ground. He desperately tries to evade the thing’s grasping hands, eventually stumbling to his feet, but it is too late. 

Jughead takes a step back and feels his heel slip downward. He manages to catch himself by grabbing onto the nearest thing, his doppelganger. Braving a peek below, Jughead sees unending darkness behind him, his feet right on the edge of nothingness. Somehow, they ended up right next to a ravine at the limits of the Blossom’s cornfield.

Jughead looks back, glancing into the rage-filled eyes of his doppelganger and then over its shoulder, at Betty.

She looks caught, terrified kneeling there on the ground next to an unconscious Archie. Jughead finds he cannot tear his eyes away from her, though, because this may be the last time he sees her.

The doppelganger tangles his fist up in Jughead’s shirt, regaining the upper hand. His double could push him right now if he wanted, and he might get away unscathed.

Jughead keeps his gaze on Betty, though. He wants to apologize to her, knowing somehow this entire ordeal is his fault, the result of his stupid wish.

Dilton warned him right off the bat. These things usually end one way. One of the paradoxes must go. He just really hoped it wouldn’t end up being him, but then he laughs at himself. It would naturally follow given his terrible luck that the doppelganger would win in the end. The better version of himself would always prevail, will prevail, and that tells Jughead everything he needs to know. He is the lesser Jughead, the faulty Jughead, the one who neglected Betty for his writing instead of finding what Sabrina wisely suggested, what should have been obvious, a happy medium.

He feels the double’s grip on his shirt loosen, and Jug’s stomach flips with sick anticipation. He snatches the double’s wrist, feeling his heels lose purchase on the ground. Sliding an inch further into the ravine, he knows at any moment the ground could give out beneath him and that would be that.

Feeling the tension between them slipping, Jughead makes one last bid. He doesn’t think he can convey the depth of his feelings with only a few seconds left, but if it were for Betty, he would always try. “Be there for her.”

He doesn’t quite know what the doppelganger makes of it, but Jughead feels the sensation of falling about to come over him and braces himself.

“Stop!” A girl shouts, and Jughead thinks it is Betty, merciful Betty, forgiving Betty.

Both Jugheads look towards the blonde, her eyes are directed back towards Lone Maple Farms. There on the cusp of the cornfield are Sabrina Spellman and Veronica Lodge. Sabrina belts the truth across the clearing, and Jughead feels the grip on his shirt tighten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tentative plans to have the final chapter out by Monday. 
> 
> I would love to hear your thoughts :3 Many thanks for reading!


	3. not so evil twin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all again for the wonderful feedback on this story so far!
> 
> Yes, I promised this much earlier, but last week was... things. Also, I added a chapter. It didn't feel right as one chapter, and it got very long. However, chapter four is mostly written, so it shouldn't be too far behind. 
> 
> And last but not least, all the gratitude to _ArsenicPanda_ for helping with this story <3 They provide such great feedback, and really help pinpoint the areas that need work because, like the Jughead in this story, I can be really shortsighted, too.

As Veronica wheels Archie into the exam room, she bends down to whisper something in her boyfriend’s ear. By the loopy look Archie gives her, the redhead doesn’t seem capable of comprehending anything past single syllables at a time, nodding along and processing nothing. Veronica brushes hair out of Archie’s eyes, glazed and puppyish, looking as enamored with her as he did that first night in Pop’s diner with just the four of them.

Jughead winces, getting another look at the mess of Archie’s nose. He supposes it is a good thing the redhead cannot feel his face. Though Archie’s bell has been rung more than once both on the playing field and off, the kid did take the hardest part of the human body right to the beak.

Veronica, warm but still distraught, shakes her head gently and smiles with a fondness she reserves only for his best friend. It does nothing but deepen Jughead’s remorse, feeling his anger well up again. It isn’t directed at his doppelganger this time.

He wills himself to stop struggling. Self-loathing is like quicksand, and the more he struggles against the collective disappointment aimed his way, the deeper he sinks into his own shame. Still, he wishes he were anywhere but here, but then he pounces on that mole before it can sprout from another hole because Jughead Jones just became the poster boy for _be careful what you wish for_.

Turning back toward the magazine rack, he feels too many sets of eyes on him. He tries to be casual, his fingers tripping over the stack of magazines, a recent _Good Housekeeping,_ a wrinkled copy of _People,_ and then settling on a worn _Popular Mechanics_ , December 1984 issue advertising DIY kit planes. Based on the cover photo, Jughead wonders how many lawsuits came out of this article, but damn if he didn’t wish for his own escape plane off the planet at this very moment, DIY or otherwise.

Sabrina studies both Jugheads like they are her two biggest failures. He can feel her gaze boring a hole in the side of his face every time she settles on him, and he sinks just a little deeper in the sand. There seems to be a rash of it going around, disappointment, because he felt that same aura coming from Veronica for the entire ride to the urgent care. Betty, too, holding the ruined beanie in her hands, the unmistakable wilt of disappointment on her face right now, all of it chafes.

He wills himself not to scratch that itch, stepping around the magazine rack. Everywhere he looks there is another dose of disapproval, everywhere except from his doppelganger. It isn’t disappointment, per say, but it definitely sets Jughead on edge.

The double won’t stop staring at him. Sprawled in one of the blue plastic chairs, he tracks Jughead’s movements, judging every fidget, every nervous side-eye. Jughead does his best to ignore him.

Betty made them promise to play nice until they got to the urgent care, but now that they are here, he wonders if that détente still holds water. If his double keeps looking at him like that, he might just tear that flimsy treaty to shreds.

It is more disarming than he thought to have someone with his face staring back at him, scrutinizing him, dissecting him, even though he would never admit to doing the exact same thing earlier today at Pop’s. But then, the doppelganger hadn’t known Jughead was staring at him, so the same discomfort does not apply. Therefore, the double really has no business staring at him, he reasons, flipping through a back issue of _The New Yorker_.

He can guess what the doppelganger is looking for – evidence of Sabrina’s assertion back at Lone Maple Farms. Apparently, they are both Jughead.

That proclamation was enough to convince the doppelganger not to push him into the ravine. As soon as Sabrina announced they were one and the same, his double tossed him safely away from the ledge. Rolling onto his back, Jughead could only stare up at the hunter’s moon with a mess of conflicting emotions thudding beneath his sternum, caught between residual fear for his life and blooming relief that he was not a tangle of broken limbs at the bottom of the ravine. For that, Jughead should be thankful for Sabrina’s timely intervention, but he still hasn’t fully processed what it meant.

Sabrina’s insistence that they were the same person only complicated Jughead’s feelings on the matter, and that fog of confusion has not lifted.

He senses his double’s mood darkening the longer he stares at him, and Jughead wonders where the identity thief gets off. Rolling up the magazine in his hand, he readies to give his double a lesson in good manners, but then the other Jughead turns to Sabrina. “What did you mean by we’re both Jughead?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Sabrina provides. “You are both Jughead. Neither of you is ‘evil.’” She puts air quotations around that, and Jughead just knows Veronica or Archie made the claim that at least one of the Jugheads might be a nefarious bastard. Probably Veronica while imitating Jughead’s voice.

Then Sabrina adds, “Also, if one of you dies, the other dies, too, so, in the future, you probably shouldn’t toss the other off the side of a cliff. That doesn’t end well for either of you.”

Jughead fumes. That would have been nice to know before he entered a fight to the death with this guy. Then, he realizes something far more important, brandishing the rolled-up magazine at her. “You did do something!” He knew it. He knew her little visit to Pop’s last night was not so innocent.

Sabrina gives both the magazine and Jughead a dismissive look, like she could turn them both into a toad if he so much as thought about doing anything with it. “To be fair, I did not plan for one of you to push the other off a cliff, or for anybody to end up in the hospital,” she contends, sweeping her hand across their sad little scene at the urgent care.

It feels like what it is. Sabrina is blaming him, and that incites him. “I didn’t ask you to grant my wish,” both Jugheads shout at the same time, and then glare at one another.

The receptionist knocks on the plexiglass and waggles a finger at them. Jughead bites his cheek and sinks into one of the seats, tossing the crumpled magazine onto the empty seat next to him.

“It wasn’t your wish,” Sabrina counters, glancing at Betty, whose gaze remains deliberately fixed on the beanie in her hands. She is hiding something, he can tell. Sabrina quickly confirms this, confessing, “It was Betty’s.” Betty shoots a warning look at Sabrina, looking like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

Both Jugheads gape, pointing back and forth at each other. “You wished for this?”

Betty gathers the beanie into both hands and cradles it against her belly. “Not exactly,” she admits, her voice soft and timid, unable to look either of them in the eye.

A flush rises from the neckline of her sweater, blooming in two obvious patches on her cheeks. His gut does a weird little flip, curiosity churning to know what prompted this particular wish. Jughead leans back in his chair, studying her reaction. The plastic squeaks with the tiny voice in his head. _Betty doesn’t blush for nothing_. Then, he banishes that thought, reasoning that it is probably having both Jugheads interrogating her at once. Jughead isn’t exactly comfortable being around some guy with his face and body either, so he cannot imagine how Betty is handling this new reality.

Overheating, Betty groans and buries her face in her hands. “I don’t know, it was stupid,” she laments, folding in on herself.

“Betty,” the doppelganger prompts gently, rising partway from his chair.

Jughead wants to go comfort her himself. The moment he thinks it, he hears something like an echo in the back of his head, like hearing his own thoughts reflected at him from the ether where thoughts originate. Jughead rolls his shoulders against the uncomfortable feeling, like someone was listening to his thoughts through a glass cup to the wall of his skull. He decides against comforting Betty and watches his double sit back down as if reaching the same conclusion. Jughead crosses his legs and shifts his body away from his double, feeling the full force of that surreality at once. _What the hell was that?_

Betty peels her hands off her face and looks between them, that same wilt of disappointment and regret from before wetting the green of her eyes. It is then Jughead realizes she is not disappointed in them.

“I never want to get in the way of your writing,” she reasons. Jughead knows this. It is one of the things he loves most about her, her unfailing support, but then she confesses, “But, I also selfishly want to spend time with you. I always want to be with you, Juggie, but sometimes I worry I’m keeping you from what you’re really passionate about. I don’t ever want to be a source of writer’s block for you.”

He is officially a ripe asshole. His girlfriend loves him and wants to be with him but is too worried about getting in the way of his writing. He should ask his double to smack him again. He started this fire. His actions created the conditions where Betty could feel that way, like a nuisance, a burden, when she is anything but. Jesus, he is the biggest jerk. Still, he feels a warm cramp of affection for her, for her concern, because she would do that, would wish to have him and love him and also give him space to do the other things he loves, the things he loves more because of her. He realizes she never figured it out either, the happy medium, both of them haplessly swinging away from each other in their effort not to devalue or bother the other. 

Jughead moves to sit next to Betty, inadvertently knocking heads with his double. He rubs his forehead in irritation, curbing the instinct to snap, instigate, lash out, anything else that would be inappropriate for the moment. Instead, he takes the empty seat on Betty’s right while the doppelganger sinks into the empty seat on her left. When both reach for her closest hand, Jughead almost shouts at his double to stay the hell out of his brain, but damnit it, Betty takes priority right now.

“Betty,” Jughead starts, accidentally cutting off the double. “You are the antithesis of writer’s block,” he assures her, cradling her hand within his own.

“You are what I’m really passionate about,” the double adds, mirroring his hold on her hand. While the presence of his double for this tender moment irritates him, Jughead is aware the other’s words are the perfect complement to his own. For the first time, he considers his double could be Jughead, too, albeit the annoying Jughead.

Both Jugs stroke the soft spot between thumb and forefinger, and Betty’s blush deepens. “Sorry, um, it’s just a little overwhelming,” she excuses in a hurry, drawing her hands out and moving to a seat three chairs away. She apologizes a few more times, pressing the back of her hand to her burning cheek. “I’m still processing.”

“Of course, yeah, that’s understandable,” his double reasons.

He doesn’t seem the least bit offended by Betty’s reaction, but Jughead feels a small pinch of rejection in his gut. Jughead realizes how long it’s been since he touched Betty. He wouldn’t count the cornfield because touching her now, it felt different from the maze. It felt good, so good, like fitting the last piece into a particularly difficult jigsaw puzzle that’s been sitting unfinished on the table for weeks. Stroking his thumb across his palm, trying to hold onto the residual heat from her hand, he thinks about how many of his problems are always solved simply by being with her.

Betty claps her thighs around clasped hands and turns to Sabrina. “You know I also never said I wanted it to actually happen.”

“It wasn’t supposed to go down like this,” Sabrina maintains again. She points at the Jugheads. “Besides, he wished for it, too. I figured since you both felt the same way, it would work out okay.”

Incredulous, Jughead gestures at their current predicament, pointing at his double’s black eye, his own fat lip. “How did you not know this would go terribly wrong? In what world?”

If Sabrina had the smallest grasp of what Jughead was like as a person, she would have been able to predict all of this. Even from an objective standpoint, Jughead discovering his doppelganger ended badly. In every scenario, he would not react well to that. Jughead knew from every book and movie on the subject that the presence of a double was an ill omen. It also didn’t hep that the first person to talk him through his identity crisis was Dilton Doiley whose pessimism rivaled his own.

Sabrina tilts her head to the side and reasons, “Honestly? I thought you’d hole up writing the entire day.” She points at the other Jughead. “And he would spend all that time with Betty, but I guess there was a glitch in the partitioning. People don’t always split cleanly. I only wanted to give Betty some time with you, okay? That’s all.”

His double leans forward, not quite accepting Sabrina’s justification. “Yeah, but that’s one day. What about the rest of our lives?”

Jughead was thinking the exact same thing, sending a hopeful look toward Sabrina.

Their wish granter sighs. “It’s only temporary,” she informs them. “It only worked because it was Halloween. The barriers between dimensions are naturally weaker. The hunter’s moon really helped, but you guys don’t need to worry. It should wear off by tomorrow. By November 1st, you’ll be one Jughead again, I promise.”

Both Jugheads sigh with relief. He thinks his head would explode if he found out this was forever.

Jughead leans back, gradually wrapping his head around this situation, but his mind keeps snagging on one small detail. “If you did this spell or whatever last night, why didn’t we run into each other this morning?”

“It takes a while to complete the split. There can be some dimensional weirdness at the beginning. Then, as the day progresses and the dimensional boundaries grow weaker, the separation between you gets stronger or _neater_. So, I bet this morning you guys experienced some things together and some apart at the same time until finally.” Sabrina makes a breaking motion with her hands.

Both Jugheads nod, accepting this could be true. This morning was wonky, though Jughead is surprised his dad didn’t notice there were two Jugheads wandering around the trailer. Or it was just dumb luck FP never connected the dots.

“Besides, you aren’t meant to exist separately. Spells like this can be very temperamental and are naturally unstable. That is probably why my predictions didn’t work. There’s too much overlap between the two of you. Your consciences are slightly melted into one another,” Sabrina continues, partially arguing with herself. “Not to mention your lifelines are tied to each other, another unavoidable caveat with these kinds of spells.”

Jughead smirks, turning to Sabrina. “Speaking of witch.”

He raises an eyebrow at her, and she catches his meaning, rolling her eyes. “Yes, witches exist. Any questions?” Sabrina states in a way that does not invite further inquiry.

Jughead has questions, though, enough to last them into next week, but he doesn’t get the chance to ask them, at least not tonight, when Veronica wheels Archie out of the exam room. Everyone’s attention turns to the swirly-looking redhead in the wheelchair with a giant bandage butterflying over his nose.

Betty stands, anxiously wringing the beanie in her hands. “So?”

Veronica takes a deep breath, placing her hand on Archie’s shoulder. “He has a concussion, and his nose is broken,” she informs them like she is notifying them the president has been assassinated. Archie looks up at her with a loopy, lovestruck smile, completely unaware of what she just said, and Jughead feels more leaden guilt drop in his gut. He foresees many favors and free burgers in Archie’s future.

Veronica ends on a more optimistic note, adding, “The doctor says he’ll be just fine.” Jughead feels better for about a second until Veronica turns a withering glare on him and his double. “I hope you’re both happy with yourselves.”

Jughead rubs the back of his neck but jerks his hand away when he catches his double doing the same thing, dropping his gaze to his feet. His double wonders aloud why Archie was even there.

Veronica seethes in silence, letting them both shrink and stew under her glower for a few, merciless beats before she relents, taking a deep breath and recentering herself. Smiling tightly, she turns to him and not his double, and he is amazed she can tell the difference. Is it that obvious?

“After your erratic behavior at the diner and knowing _you_ , I thought it would be a good idea if Archie followed you, just in case you did something stupid. Turns out that was the right move because you would probably be a grease spot at the bottom of Dead Man’s Bluff right now. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out great for my Archie-kins,” she explains, pattering her boyfriend’s shoulder.

Jughead winces at the purple rings blooming out from the redhead’s nose and circling his puppy brown eyes. Veronica raises an expectant brow at both Jugheads, tapping her foot. Jughead rocks back and forth on his heels but stops when he notices the other Jughead doing the same thing again. Both offer up a sullen apology, and it doesn’t feel remotely close to enough. By the look on Veronica’s face, she thinks the same.

For what it’s worth, Jughead feels rotten. He hadn’t intended for any of this to happen, but he should have known better because, well, Murphy’s Law. Knowing himself, he isn’t all that surprised the other Jughead refused to go down without a fight, especially when Betty was involved, because Betty was involved. He should have predicted that, but again, his narrow-mindedness tends to bite him in the ass at the worst times.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear the most important part,” Veronica prompts with a warning scowl.

Jughead chews on his cheek, and his double sighs with not a little petulance, but both eventually admit, “You were right.”

Veronica smiles meanly. “Thank you. Now, I’m going to get Archie-kins home mostly in one piece.” 

She gestures between the two Jugheads. “Seems this has resolved itself, no thanks to either of you. Have a happy Halloween, jerks.”

She turns to Sabrina. “Would you like a ride home, dear?”

It bothers him that Veronica would be nicer to the sole cause of this entire drama, but they did send Archie to the ER, so no legs there.

Sabrina, for her part, has the grace to look contrite. She approaches the Jugheads. “I should apologize, too. It was wrong to make the assumptions I did, and I should’ve asked you first. As recompense, I’ll perform one spell for you and Betty each. It doesn’t have to be right now. You can think on it and tell me later. If I can do it, I will. Will that make us square?” She offers with what Jughead considers to be genuine sincerity.

“Does that make Sabrina like a fairy godmother?”

Everyone turns to the bleary-eyed redhead in the wheelchair. Looking queasy and tired, Archie probably only caught the latter half of the conversation. Veronica rubs his chest affectionately. “Come on, Archie-kins, let’s get you home.”

She starts to roll him toward the door, repeating her earlier offer to Sabrina. Sabrina nods but waits for an answer from the Jugheads and Betty.

Technically, he should get his own wish separate from his doppelganger, but he can guess Sabrina’s response to that smart-ass remark. _You really want to push your luck_? However, they are essentially the same person, he concedes, so the one wish deal is more or less fair. Jughead looks at his double and shrugs. His double tilts his head, weighing the options, and then shrugs back. “Yeah, we’d be square.” 

“Betty?” Sabrina wonders.

Betty doesn’t even hesitate, smiling warmly. “Of course.”

Sabrina smiles back and steps toward her, taking Betty’s hands inside her own. She leans forward and whispers something to Betty that the Jugheads cannot hear, but whatever it is makes Betty’s blush return in full force. Then, she skips off to catch up with Veronica, leaving Betty alone with the Jugheads.

* * *

Despite Betty’s reservations, the Jugheads steamroll her in the direction of Pop’s, both craving some comfort food to wash away the bad taste of the evening. The bell dings above their heads, and Betty wonders aloud, “Won’t Pop think it’s weird seeing two of you?”

Jughead corrals her toward a center booth, reasoning, “We’ll say it’s our Halloween costume.” He jabs his thumb at his double. “He can be the Craigslist Jug.”

The other Jughead frowns. “Wait, why do I have to be the fake Jughead?”

“Because you didn’t get the hat,” Jughead justifies, taking a seat next to Betty. “Also, your black eye.”

His double slides into the booth on Betty’s other side, squishing them all onto one seat.

Betty shifts uncomfortably. “You guys know there is a whole other side of the table, right?”

However, neither Jughead is willing to relinquish the best seat in the house next to Betty Cooper, but no one says that out loud. Betty waits to see if one of them will cave and give her some space, but after a few moments and no movement, she sighs in defeat, fingering the hole in the top of their crown. Jughead glances at the beanie and knows it is going to be hell to fix.

Pop sidles up to their table with his good-natured smile and characteristic warmth, and Jughead finally feels like things are falling into place. He hopes this might be the first sign their night can get back on track.

“Wow, that is some costume,” Pop marvels, peering at the doppel-Jug. “He could be your twin. How’d you two find each other?”

“Craigslist,” Jughead says, playing it casual.

“It’s a shame you two weren’t here for the costume content. I’m sure you’d have had a shot at winning,” Pop informs them, adding that the top prize was a fifty-dollar gift certificate for the diner. That would have helped cover the milkshakes he owes Dilton, also the atonement burgers for Archie.

Pop smiles at the other Jughead. “What’s your name, son?”

Miffed that he has to play doppel-Jug, his double sulkily supplies the name they agreed on earlier. “Dylan.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Dylan,” Pop greets warmly. He points a finger at the double’s eye. “Can I ask who won?”

The other Jughead gingerly prods the blueing flesh around his eye and grimaces. “No one,” he reveals. Everyone lost tonight. 

“How about I get a bag of ice for the shiners?” Pop offers without judgment. Jughead knows the diner owner does not condone physical violence. However, it was not in Pop’s nature to lecture others, just provide advice if solicited and help always, if needed. It is one of his greatest qualities, in Jughead’s opinion.

Jughead thanks him kindly, reaching around Betty to prod the bruise forming on his double’s chin. The other Jughead smacks his hand, jostling Betty. 

“Play nice, please,” Betty appeals gently.

Pop smiles and shakes his head, figuring it for run-of-the-mill teenage roughhousing. He spares them the lecture and asks, “What can I get you all?”

Unfortunately, their timing sucks when both Jugheads order the same thing at the same time, prompting Pop to laugh. “Did you guys plan that just to fool with me?” 

Jughead leans toward him with a playful smirk. “Practiced it all week just for you, Pop.”

Pop seems pleased with the gag, shaking his head fondly. “And you, Betty?”

“Just a vanilla milkshake, please and thank you, Pop,” Betty requests, looking mildly embarrassed and shifting awkwardly between the two chuckleheads on either side of her.

“Coming right up,” Pop chirps.

Betty waits until Pop is at the service counter to remind Jughead, “He is still you, remember. You’re both you.” Leaving the beanie in her lap, she reaches out and clasps a hand on both his thigh and the other Jughead’s, giving each a chastising squeeze. “Please don’t fight anymore.”

Both Jugheads properly chastened, they sit in silence for a while. Pop brings Betty’s milkshake and two black coffees. When Jughead goes to reach for Betty’s cherry like always, his hand bumps into his doubles, and he smacks it, shattering the peace again.

Betty waves both their hands away and snatches up her own cherry, biting down hard and tossing the stem on the tabletop. “You two are insufferable. Can we go five minutes without one of you starting something? You’d think being the same person, you wouldn’t piss each other off so much.”

She has a point. Jughead doesn’t know exactly why his double bothers him, even now after knowing they are technically the same individual. Perhaps if they had started on better footing, namely without the assumption his doppelganger was evil, Jughead might have warmed up to him. Or it’s Betty.

Jughead hasn’t had to share Betty’s affection since the early days of their relationship when he still worried she would go running back to Archie. Jughead resented himself for feeling that way then, and he doesn’t like feeling that way now. It feels ridiculous to be jealous of who is essentially himself, but he is, jealous, suspicious, greedy. He has had so little time with Betty in the last couple weeks. Of course, most of that is his fault, but still. His double got most of the day with her. It doesn’t help that his double predicts his every move, like he is trying to one-up him.

“Can I ask you something?” Betty says suddenly, manipulating the beanie in her lap.

“Sure,” Jughead offers, slinging his arm along the back of the booth.

“What did you wish for?”

Jughead brings his arm back into his lap, sitting up straighter. “Um, the same thing you did. What Sabrina said.”

“I know, but what did you ask for specifically?” Betty wonders, looking at him directly now, her green eyes curious and searching.

“Probably similar to what you wished for,” he supposes. “That there were two of me. One could write, and the other could be with you.”

His double flicks him on the side of the head. “If you want to go write right now, be my guest.”

“No,” Jughead snaps, tamping down on his instinct to retaliate and do something else to upset Betty further. “I want to be here,” he swears, sinking into his seat as if challenging someone to remove him. “If anyone should leave, it’s you. You got to spend the whole day with her.”

Betty grabs their thighs again, her squeeze much firmer this time, meaning business. “Neither of you has to go anywhere. I want you both here,” she declares, brokering no room for argument. She pats their thighs and then wraps her hands around her milkshake glass, drawing it towards her to wrap her lips around the candy red straw.

“Besides,” Jughead adds, crossing his arms. “It wasn’t the same.”

Betty swipes a finger through her whipped cream and sticks it in her mouth. Pulling it from her lips with a slick pop, she asks, “What wasn’t the same?”

Jughead watches her lips mulling over the whipped cream in the foreground, and then his gaze focuses on the background and catches his double watching the same thing. His face grows hot, and his gaze darts down into his coffee black. If his doppelganger weren’t here, Jughead would have touched her, probably kissed her on the cheek or the temple. He doesn’t like this, not being able to show affection for her, not being able to show her how much he cares about her.

“The writing,” he finally answers, taking a sip of his coffee and trying not to think about how sweet her mouth tastes right now, remnant cherry and vanilla and delicious. “Something was wrong with it.”

Betty tilts her face toward him with an inquisitive look. “Do you want me to look it over later?”

Then, Jughead does kiss her, leaning forward and pressing his lips to hers. He doesn’t let it last too long, a chaste brush of lips to lips, just enough to let her know that she means so much to him, that she always knows exactly what to say, that she can break and remake his heart in one sentence or less. When he pulls away, she looks stunned, and he doesn’t feel bad about it. He doesn’t care if the doppelganger evens the score later because he wants Betty to know that she is enough for him, always. 

His writing never took precedence over Betty, but Jughead realizes now that he has never actually told her that. “Betty, I know I make a big deal about writing, and I can get tunnel vision when it comes to inspiration, but you are my priority,” he professes. “Yes, writing is important to me, but you are more. You will always be more important.”

He hears the echo in his head again, like someone tapped into the same radio channel. He expects the other Jughead to make some undercutting remark, but instead, he imparts, “We’re sorry we made you feel otherwise.”

Jughead would be angry at the double for invading his head, but it matches his own sentiment word for word. Then, he considers perhaps the other Jughead may be feeling a similar sense of regret for his actions, for neglecting Betty. He thinks again that this guy with his face might really be him. His doppelganger sends him a look of understanding over Betty’s shoulder before drawing her head back, pressing a quick kiss to the back of her head and then letting her go before anyone in the diner sees.

Betty turns around in her seat, her face red all over again, and her visible discomfort makes him feel equally as uncomfortable. Jughead fiddles awkwardly with the handle of his coffee mug, trying to find something to say. He didn’t mean to embarrass her, and that was probably too much emotion for the circumstances, but then he feels fingers twining between his own. The warmth of Betty’s palm folds over the top of his hand, and with the warmth, relief. Looking across, he sees her do the same with the other Jughead, a small smile playing across her lips. His double draws her hand up to his lips to kiss her knuckles before replacing it on the booth seat.

“We’ll do better,” his double promises, and Jughead corroborates that with a gentle squeeze of her hand.

Maybe they will make it to midnight after all.

At the conclusion of their meal, his double pays the tab, and Jughead helps Betty into her coat. On the way out, the bell dings above their heads, and it feels like the final signal that the night is ending, but then Betty turns and asks if they could walk her home.

The other Jughead holds the door open for her. “Of course, Betts. Now that we know witches exist, who knows what else might be out there on a night like tonight,” he reasons, following them both down the steps. “The least we can do is walk you home.”


	4. double double toil and trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *deep breath* It's finished. Yes, there is almost ~10k of smut. 
> 
> Beta support kindly provided by the inestimable _ArsenicPanda_! Many many thanks <3
> 
> Hope you all enjoy :)

For the entire walk to Betty’s house, Jughead works up the courage to hold Betty’s hand, but every time he thinks about making a move, he peeks around her and just knows the other Jughead is thinking the exact same thing, both clenching their respective fists in frustration.

Reaching the Cooper house, Betty clips up the steps and stops in front of the red door. Spinning on her heels, she reveals that her parents are supposed to be at a party in Centerville until tomorrow.

The doppelganger seems unsurprised by this announcement, and Jughead figures they made plans earlier in the day when he was still outside the loop. He knows it shouldn’t bother him as much as it does. It is foolish to envy who is essentially himself, but it hammers home their earlier conversation, that Jughead needs to communicate better, needs to be a more active participant in their relationship because benign neglect is still neglect.

So, when Betty waggles the ripped beanie at them and offers, “You guys could stay while I try to fix this. I think I have matching yarn,” Jughead’s first instinct is to say yes. Betty rocks gently on her heels and bribes them with more food, just to seal the deal. “I could make some coffee. There are Halloween-themed cookies.”

Jughead pretends to mull it over. “Homemade?”

Offended he would dare to ask, Betty scoffs, “Of course. Baked this morning. With frosting.”

Jughead is a simple man, tamed by the promise of Betty’s cookies alone. “Sold,” he chirps, hopping up the steps two at a time, his double following close behind.

In the foyer, Jughead shuffles out of his shoes and reasons, “I did promise to spend the whole day with you.” Besides, he didn’t actually spend much time with her today; his double did.

“Yeah, it’s still your day, Betts,” his double adds, kicking off his own shoes.

Betty pauses in untying her shoes, contemplating aloud, “It’s still weird. You said it over voicemail, but.” She stands up, stepping out of her shoes and looking at his double. “You told me the same thing at the diner. It didn’t even occur to me that two separate people told me the same thing. I just thought you were repeating yourself.”

Jughead knows Sabrina planned for them to split right down the middle. One half would write. The other would spend the day with Betty. Sabrina assumed the writer Jughead would not interfere, wouldn’t even think about Betty. That comforts him a little, knowing that even his most single-minded, least-charming, hermit-writer self would never forget about Betty, never altogether. There were no iterations of Jughead Jones where Betty Cooper was not at the top of his shortlist of priorities.

Betty orders the Jugheads to wait in her bedroom while she brews the coffee, just in case her parents come home early. It reminds Jughead to text his dad and let him know they are alright. That thought strikes him as odd, _they_.

In Betty’s bedroom, neither Jughead wants to sit down first. Both paces nervously about their half of the bedroom. While he fiddles with the knickknacks on a shelf, the other Jughead idles near her vanity, rolling a tube of chapstick back and forth beneath his index finger. Whatever unspoken agreement they made back in the diner doesn’t feel like it has quite reached this space. Without Betty to play the middleman, he doesn’t know how to interact with – Jesus, he doesn’t know how to act around _himself._

Jughead decides to break the ice first. “You should text dad we’re okay,” he mentions, trying for casual as he tilts up a porcelain candle holder shaped like an elephant. He finds a half-burned tealight that smells like apples and honey and reminds him of Betty.

The other Jughead hums in agreement, fishing their phone out of his pocket. “You know, I was just thinking about that downstairs, too.”

Jughead turns and seats himself on the edge of Betty’s desk, deciding to test something out because this shouldn’t be so damned awkward. “How many cookies are you planning to eat?”

The other Jughead sends a mischievous grin his way. “As many as she brings up here.”

Jughead chuckles because he too will be snarfing down as many cookies as Betty permits. Jughead is a notorious stress-eater, and this night ranks fairly high on his list of most stressful evenings, to be sure. Perhaps that’s part of the reason Betty invited them in for a nightcap, knowing they would still be hungry. They also could not go home and face FP in their current state(s).

It would also make sense why Betty promptly sent them upstairs. Both Jugs made quick work of their meals at Pop’s, and if given free rein, the two would demolish most of the Cooper pantry. Two stressed-out Jugheads wandering too close to the kitchen was a recipe for disaster. Therefore, it was in Betty’s best interest to bring up the entire cookie jar as a preemptive strike.

Jughead smiles. She always thinks two steps ahead, and he adores her for it.

“Are you thinking that she is too nice to us?” the other Jughead wonders aloud.

“Yeah,” he admits, and then tries one more question, just for confirmation. “Hey, what number am I thinking of?”

“Three.”

“Asshole.”

His doppelganger rolls his eyes and goes back to inspecting the photographs stuffed in the frame of Betty’s vanity, but Jughead catches his silent rebuttal. _Dick_.

“You kiss your girlfriend with that mouth?” Jughead trolls, fighting a smirk.

“I kissed your girlfriend with it about ten times today,” his double returns cheekily, flicking at one of the photos, a group shot from middle school.

There were suggestions of it at the urgent care. Sabrina hinted at it as well. He would not call it perfect telepathy, but ideas spring up in the back of his head like echoes of his own, their thoughts tuned to a similar frequency. Jughead senses it growing stronger, clearer, though, and he wonders if that is a product of physical proximity or the approach of midnight. According to Sabrina, this ends at the conclusion of Halloween. Midnight is only a few hours away.

Betty arrives with a tray full of cookies and steaming mugs of coffee. The Jugheads are patient enough to let her set the tray on the desk before they ambush her flanks and stake their claims for as many cookies as they can get their hands on.

“Hey, grabby,” Betty scolds fondly, folding a hand over a couple cookies for herself, lest the human claw machines on either side of her commandeer every sweet, buttery crumb.

She takes her cookies and her owl mug to the bed. Setting them on the nightstand, she bends to retrieve her knitting supplies from the cubby beneath, taking a seat on the side of her bed. “I hope you two are learning to play nice,” she says, inspecting the ripped beanie in her lap.

Jughead appropriates the desk chair but immediately regrets his decision when the other Jughead stretches out at the foot of her bed, stacking cookies on his stomach. Betty tucks her socked feet beneath his thigh to keep her toes warm and gets comfortable against the mountain of pillows. Would it be weird if he joined them on the bed? The bed is big enough, Jug reasons, eyeing the left side of the bed, appearing empty and expansive and very much up-for-grabs from his vantage point.

It is peaceful for a bit, the silence companionable, even as Jughead stews on whether or not he should take shotgun on the bed. The other Jughead munches happily on his cookies, dipping them in his hot coffee just enough to let the frosting get melty. Betty hums as she matches a couple yarn samples to the knit of their beanie. Jughead nibbles at his own cookies for a bit until he cannot bear it, relinquishing himself to the inescapable compulsion to be closer to Betty.

He abandons the desk chair and pounces on the other side of the bed, falling back against the pillows. He almost puts his own feet on the other Jughead’s face just to annoy him but decides to play nice for now, keeping his knees bent. There have been enough altercations tonight, and Betty probably would not appreciate the Jugheads getting into a wrestling match in her bedroom.

Jughead shoves an entire cookie in his mouth and suddenly notices Betty’s socks. He smiles around the wad of sugar cookie stuffed in his gob. He wants to reach out and touch them, poke one of the grinning cartoon jack-o’-lanterns floating in a black starry night. The black accentuates the curves of her ankles and knees, her skirt ending a few inches above them to reveal a tantalizing strip of bare skin. He swallows roughly, eyeing the exposed flesh. It had been days since he touched Betty, and damn it if his body didn’t know it when he finally did touch her tonight. But, he realizes it’s been longer since they’ve done more than simple touch, and his body is suddenly aware of it now.

Jesus, his mind is in the wrong part of the gutter. His double is right there with a direct feed hooked up to his brain, and when he looks down, he just knows the other Jughead knows. It is all much too Orwellian, this shrewd little thought policeman with his face. Jughead curses inwardly, but then the double smirks up at him. He gets the rise out of Jughead that he wants. However, Jug cannot distinguish whether the reaction is embarrassment or curiosity and tries to think about anything else but Betty’s thighs. Double-think indeed. 

Both Jugheads watch Betty knit for a while, eating their cookies and sipping their coffees in peaceable quiet, even though Jughead can feel the bastard tapping at his conscience. Betty, for her part, seems content to knit and take intermittent bites of cookie, slowly mending the hole in their beanie.

Jughead tries his best not to conjure up any more swear words to generously describe his doppelganger, but he hears the lyrics to Melanie’s _Brand New Key_ in the back of his head and recognizes it as the song Betty hums quietly to herself. Occasionally, she fidgets, shifting like she is trying to get comfortable. Jughead wonders if it is getting to her, having two Jugheads on her bed, two identical faces of her boyfriend looking at her.

The other Jughead finishes his cookies first and sets his mug on the carpet. He thanks Betty for the cookies, and Jughead quickly piggybacks on the praise, proving his point by making a show of shoving his last cookie in his mouth. It makes Betty laugh, and then his double interjects with an offer to make more coffee.

Betty says she has had enough. “Relax, Juggie,” she prompts, jostling the other Jughead with her feet. “I like having you both here.” So, no, not uncomfortable with them being here.

“Both of us, huh,” the other Jughead muses.

Jughead didn’t notice at first, watching Betty knit, but her fidgeting has gotten worse. She fights a smile, and then jerks one of her feet back. Looking down, he spots the other Jughead running his fingers over her ankles.

“Jug, that tickles,” she scolds, flinching every time he strokes a particularly sensitive spot. “If I mess up this stitch, it’ll be your fault.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.” His double snatches both of her feet, looping her ankles under his arm to keep her in place as he starts mercilessly tickling her.

Betty’s squeal rings high and sharp, her whole body twisting away from the other Jughead. She tosses her knitting off the side of the bed, gasping and laughing as she struggles to get her feet back, begging him to stop.

Jughead hesitantly places his lukewarm coffee on the nightstand, feeling out of the loop once again. He doesn’t know whether to save Betty from himself or stay out of it, but then his double rolls his body away from Betty’s grasping hands and looks up at him. “Hey, get her hands,” he orders, holding her feet captive.

“What? No, Juggie, help me,” Betty pleads breathlessly, tugging at the other Jughead’s shoulder as he continues tickling her feet.

Jughead nudges his mug to the edge of the nightstand just in case someone accidentally swipes it during the struggle. Then, he reaches where Betty’s hands pull at his double’s body. Betty’s eyes are filled with such relief and hope, thinking he is going to save her from himself. Caught between whining and laughing, she tries to get out a _thank you_ , but it dies as soon as Jughead wraps his hands around her wrists and falls back onto the pillows, taking her upper body with him and leaving her legs hostage to his double.

She wails _traitor_ , twisting her hips as the other Jughead relentlessly tickles her feet. Jughead pins her wrists to the pillow, and she glares at him for a moment before her features crumble into more agonized laughter, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

“Please,” she begs, her hips involuntarily rising off the bed, pressing her chest into him. “Stop him.”

“Stop who?” Jughead inquires, all faux innocence. “Stop me?”

“Jerk.” Betty gasps, turning her face into the pillow.

Jughead thinks she looks good like this, flushed and panting, overwhelmed, her cheeks and neckline stained peachy pink. _Delectable_ , he considers, and hears the responding _ditto_. Strangely validated, Jughead ducks his head and presses his mouth to the underside of her jaw, his tongue and teeth just touching the soft, warm skin of her neck before he remembers himself, more than himself. When he pulls away, Betty’s eyes are wide on him, her mouth gaped in surprise.

His double releases Betty’s feet and flops onto his back, attempting to catch his own breath. “Sorry, Betts, I couldn’t resist,” he apologizes, chuckling to himself.

Jughead liberates her wrists with a bashful _sorry_. Her lips still parted, Betty blinks up at him, green eyes wide enough to rival the little mermaid. He rolls away and falls back onto the pillows to avoid her probing gaze, but he feels it burning a hole in his cheek. His heart thudding painfully in his chest, he tries to think about anything but kissing Betty, that this is neither the time nor the place for any of that.

“Sorry,” Jughead murmurs again. He moves to sit up, mumbling something about it being late, they should get some sleep. He needs to put some space between them, but then he feels Betty’s hand on his shoulder, her gentle petition for him to stay.

”Wait, it’s still my day,” she reminds him. By her bedside clock, it is a quarter to ten, barely two hours until midnight.

Propping himself up on his elbows, his double confirms this and promises Betty anything she wants for the next two hours. “Consider it my apology for the ambush,” he reasons, turning onto his side to regard them. He stares purposefully at Jughead, some unspoken challenge hovering there. 

Jughead gets a sudden and sinking feeling that his double did it on purpose. He burrowed his way inside Jug’s head and found where the ground was soft and disturbed, the fresh and shallow grave of Jughead’s desires, buried only moments before when they were all innocently eating cookies before bed. This asshole pushed him into the gutter.

Jughead would be angrier if it weren’t for Betty’s mollifying hand on his shoulder, pressing him to lie back on the pillows, a surreal eagerness growing in her eyes. “Anything?” she wonders, her tone curious, even hopeful.

His doppelganger doubly certifies that he is on board for anything she has in mind, even if it is checkers. But, Jughead hates checkers and knows full well that playing checkers is the furthest thing from that punk’s mind.

“It’s kind of crazy,” Betty says, her voice barely above a murmur. “You can both totally say no.”

Jughead swallows roughly, anticipating her curiosity’s direction but not willing to believe it until he hears it. She can probably see every nervous tick on his face, but he tells her to _shoot_ anyway. It is her day after all. The other Jughead traces shapes on her socked calf, his gaze lazy and peaceful. Jughead feels that same easiness teasing at the periphery of his senses like a latent infection, but he cannot shake the feeling he was caught red-handed and set up.

“If I said I wanted you,” she whispers, reaching out and folding one of her hands over his own. “Both of you.”

He meets her eyes, not quite sure he heard her right, but then he sees the heat in her gaze building timidly, block by tempting block, and his brain short circuits. He always feels provoked when she looks at him like that, shyly voicing her wants like she fears his judgment.

From the foot of the bed, he hears the other Jughead respond quietly, “You got us.” As if he knows, can already sense Jughead’s consent gaining momentum in the back of his brain because he started it. Didn’t he?

The tickling excited him. Betty overwhelmed, her crying laughter, her body writhing against him as he held her down, it excited him.

There was something else, something unforeseen. The idea of having two of him to get it done was strangely appealing. It opened him up to an entirely new realm of possibility, two Jugheads, how much more two Jugheads could do for Betty, how much more two Jugheads attuned to one another could do for Betty.

Picking up the scent of Jughead’s less-than-pure ideas about Betty’s thigh-high socks, his double knew it before him. Perhaps that was his intention, essentially peer-pressuring Jughead into ambushing their girlfriend, working her into a lather of endorphins and adrenaline, working each other into a similar state, and showing him how much fun that could be. Even more calculating, he made it seem like it was Betty’s idea to take it farther.

Yet, looking at Betty now, her gaze growing hopeful, more intent, Jughead wonders for the first time if the idea had not already occurred to her. That would be – Christ, Jughead doesn’t know what that would be. 

She takes a deep breath, but it gets caught in her chest on the exhale. Looking down, Jughead can see his doppelganger got there ages ago, fingering the edges of her thigh high socks with explicit want in his gaze. Jughead gulps, suddenly feeling lightheaded, overwhelmed himself, like he might hyperventilate. This is going to happen. More surprising, Betty wants it to happen. Why does that turn him on as much as it does?

“Is that okay?” she wonders aloud, leaning toward him, her hand drifting down and smoothing across his chest as her face gets closer, close enough he can feel the warm humidity from her mouth near his own.

Jughead must look like a deer in headlights because she stops, and instead of kissing him like he hoped – thought she would, she cups his cheek. “No?”

Jughead gapes like a fish, his eyes flitting to the other Jughead, widening when his doppelganger spreads his palm across her bare thigh. Betty spreads her legs to allow him better access. Jughead’s gaze shoots back to Betty’s, studying her slightly parted lips, the shuddering rise and fall of her chest as his double propels the scene forward, fingers disappearing beneath the hem of her skirt.

Jughead tilts his cheek into her hand, staring at her mouth, at the unsaid expectation idling there. He wants to kiss her. His tongue and teeth and gums and lips ache with it. “Is that what you want?”

Betty’s nod is nearly imperceptible, but Jughead catches it and thinks his heart stops for a full minute.

“Is it too much?” she whispers and then gasps, her gaze falling to the foot of the bed where the other Jughead is busy stripping her panties down her thighs with a playful smirk directed at him.

“Group activities not your thing?” his double teases, even though he can probably hear the same reverberation of Jughead’s agreement in his own head, can sense Jughead’s eagerness growing, _hardening_. _Shit_.

Her hand falls from his cheek back to his shoulder, gathering a fistful of his shirt in her hand like she needs something to hold onto, something to ground her, and he just knows the other Jughead is up to some shady shenanigans down there. Her breath hitches, followed by a small whimper, and it scrambles his thoughts, every rationale or reason to say no scattering to the wind. She keens, wrenching on his shirt as she sinks back into her pillows, and he thinks, _yeah, definitely hard_.

He sinks with her, drawing her face toward him. She nuzzles his palm, the tip of her nose brushing against his own. The train is leaving the station, and Jughead has about five seconds to either jump on board or let it ride off into the sunset without him. Betty looks up at him through half-lidded eyes, her breaths coming heavy and fast against his lips. “Please let me show you how good of a team player I can be,” he offers as his final reassurance before he kisses her.

She latches onto him, wrapping her hand around the back of his neck, curling up against his chest. Sucking lightly on her bottom lip, she whimpers again, compelling him to kiss her more deeply. She tastes like coffee and the sweetness of her sugar cookies, and the way she moans as he slides his tongue along hers incites him like nothing else, tangling his fingers in the spiral of her ponytail so he can angle her mouth the way he likes.

Betty peels herself away, bidding for one last favor. “Promise you won’t try to one-up each other, okay?”

Jughead smiles against her mouth, kissing her chaste before swearing he will place nice. Betty hums in appreciation, twisting her body to wrap herself around him.

He disappears inside of her mouth for a while, realizing how long it has been, feeling starved of her. Her returned fervor lets him know she is right there with him. He vaguely registers his double joining the fray, pressing himself against Betty’s back. He wonders offhand if Betty is comfortable with this position, essentially sandwiched between two Jugheads, but his concern dies a quick death as she rocks her body into him, slinging her leg around his hip.

He slides one hand down her shoulder, smoothing along her ribcage and into the dip of her waist. Betty pulls away just enough that he can fold one hand over her breast, massaging her through her cashmere sweater. She sighs, pressing her chest into his hand, and he drinks up the heavy-lidded want in her eyes.

“Be honest, Betts,” his double whispers darkly from behind her ear. Jughead peeks southward, catches his doppelganger’s fingers teasing at the edge of her skirt. “Was this part of the wish?”

Jughead cannot breathe, the question wrapping his lungs up in a vise, knowing his next breath hinges on her answer. He wonders if his double tapped into his thoughts earlier throughout the evening, his offhand hunch that perhaps there was a bit more to Betty’s reaction to having two Jugheads surround her. Did she secretly hope for this?

Betty’s face is practically fire engine red. She attempts to bury it in her pillow. His double snickers, kissing the back of her neck. It _was_ a sex thing. At least part of it.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” the other Jughead assures her, bunching her skirt up to her waist. “She has no reason to be embarrassed, right?” Jughead balks at his double’s expectant look over Betty’s shoulder, feeling his own cheeks heat up.

His double pinches Betty’s collar aside and sucks a mark into the base of her neck, his other hand gripping her hip as he rocks into her from behind. Betty moans despite her mortification, arching her back and pressing her hips into his own. The back and forth sends Betty’s pelvis into the front of Jughead’s jeans where he is decidedly and obviously hard. It creates a wonderful and maddening pressure, and it should tell Betty everything she needs to know. Clearly no one involved minds too much if this whole wish of hers was part of some hidden sexual fantasy.

Jughead rolls her nipple through her sweater, his gut flipping every time she gasps in response to his double rolling his hips into her ass. “You gonna tell her this is okay?” his doppelganger prompts again, nibbling at the soft flesh where her neck meets her shoulder.

Philosophically speaking, they are the same person. Would that mean Betty is essentially about to have sex with one person? Would this count as a devil’s three way? Holy crap, how long has his girlfriend fantasized about being in a devil’s three way? Then, he wonders if she could only let herself fantasize about it if it involved Jughead and just Jughead. But, the only way that could happen was – his mind tumbles down that deep, twisting rabbit hole and gets lost.

He feels a palm swiftly cuff him on the side of the head. “Hey, not the time to overthink things,” the other Jughead chides.

Betty suddenly envelopes his hand with her own, pressing it into the soft flesh of her breast. She leans forward, her fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. She rolls her pelvis against his cock, pressure and not enough friction that is driving him wild. When she admits that the thought occurred to her, having the two of them at the same time, the confession is hot and sticky against his lips, provoking Jughead to snatch up her mouth with his own.

Theory proven, his double chuckles, and then Jughead feels Betty’s entire body jerk against him, ripping her mouth away as she takes the lord’s name in vain. Jughead cannot see what is happening below, but he has a few educated guesses.

She shimmies her hips back, creating enough space to palm him through his jeans. “Betty, shit,” he grunts, bucking into her hand.

“Can I touch you?” she wonders, already unbuttoning his jeans and dragging the zipper down.

He nods dumbly, inhaling roughly when her hand sinks down the front of his jockeys. She gets a hold of his cock and gives him a few awkward strokes. His mind melts into oblivion, dissolving into nothing with the sound of the mess between her legs, the other Jughead working her into a lather. He feels like he cannot get enough air, too much humidity and heat surrounding him.

He wonders how Betty’s isn’t more overwhelmed, stops wondering when she urges him to pull his jeans down a little more. He works his pants down just enough so she can pull his cock all the way out. Her thumb slides over the head, and he takes a deep shuddering breath, watching her, unable to tear his eyes away, and finally discards the remainder of his own embarrassment. It is unnecessary. She wants this; he wants her.

Before she can start, he grabs her wrist and raises it to his mouth, licking one solid stripe from the base of her palm to the tips of her fingers. She bites her lip, her avid green eyes tracing the path of his tongue along the length of her hand. Once he has coated her palm in enough spit, he returns it to his cock, curling her fingers around his girth and letting her take the wheel.

His hand drifts beneath her sweater, fingers crawling up beneath the cup of her bra to palm her bare breast. He rolls the firm peak of her nipple, and she hums in delight, blinking slowly through a fog of heady lust.

Her strokes are firm and determined, and she murmurs how hard he feels. He is, unbelievably so, to the point he can barely see straight. He feels way too keyed up, that this is all rushing towards him too quickly. The moment he wonders if his double feels the same, he gets that same echo whirring in the back of his head, the frenetic ache of painful arousal. But underneath that, Jughead senses the warm satisfaction he always gets when Betty feels pleasure, when he feels the physical evidence of Betty’s pleasure.

Jughead’s other hand fishes through the tangle of limbs, reaching between Betty’s legs. His fingers bump into his double’s, slipping over the other Jughead’s slick knuckles as he thrusts his fingers in and out of Betty’s pussy.

Betty seems to be trying to get her mouth to work correctly, opening and closing it a few times as she tugs roughly on his cock. Her strokes are too fast now, and he grabs her wrist to stop her. It shakes her out of it, and she bids quickly, chasing the thought. “Can we try something?” He nods because he also cannot form complete words at the moment, fighting the impending need to come.

Betty moans, her face crumpling with pleasure, and she pushes at his double’s hand, clamping her thighs together. “Can – can one of you go in the bathroom and get the bottle of aloe vera?” She dislodges the other Jughead’s hand from between her thighs with a grunt, telling him it is in the medicine cabinet. “Third shelf on the left.”

His double noses behind her ear, laughing lightly. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?”

Betty hooks her chin on her shoulder, sending him a devious look. “Is that okay?”

His double smirks and then steals her mouth. Jughead cannot help watching with some kind of morbid fascination, the surreality of seeing him kiss Betty and not actually be the one kissing her. Yet, he feels the excitement and arousal roiling in his belly all the same. It is not a chaste kiss by any means, his double prompting Betty’s lips to part farther, and he can imagine the taste of her, the purr of Betty’s appreciation as she moans into the other Jughead’s mouth.

The other Jughead releases her mouth, smoothing his thumb along her spit-slick lower lip. “As long as you’re okay with it.” She nods emphatically now, peppering eager and happy little kisses across his jawline.

His doppelganger levels with him. “What about you, hoss?”

“At the same time,” Jughead wonders, catching their drift, his pulse speeding up. _Holy shit, is that even possible?_

“We’ll have to be careful,” the other Jughead cautions. “Start slow.”

His double cups Betty’s chin in his hand, prompting her to look at him. “Have you played with your ass before?”

That sends Jughead reeling. He knows he hasn’t. Not that he can recall. Unless there are memories his double got in the split that he didn’t. Wait, no, he has never played with Betty’s ass. He knows that. While his mind short circuits all over again, he vaguely overhears Betty’s confirmation, and then he thinks his mind literally explodes.

“Did you like it?” his double asks, voice quiet and careful. Betty nods shyly, sliding her thigh teasingly along Jughead’s hip. He catches it in his hand, his imagination running a mile a minute.

The other Jughead smiles fondly, his thumb stroking Betty’s cheek. “You never cease to surprise me.”

His double extricates himself from the tangle of bodies on the bed with a quick _be right back_ , and Betty turns and immediately pounces on him. She presses her mouth to his, more teeth than anything because she cannot stop smiling, her body practically vibrating with excitement.

Betty pushes him onto his back and straddles him, sitting up with her hands planted on his chest. “I’ve always wanted to try this,” she confesses, her eagerness evident.

When she rolls her hips against him, he hisses, grabbing her waist. “Are you sure about this?” he asks one more time, both terrified and deathly curious himself.

This is new territory for him. Jughead has never been against new ventures in their sex life. Everything they have tried so far has gone well – most of it fantastically, if he is being completely honest. New positions, new places, some light roleplaying, restraints that one time. All of it was met with an open mind and a curious heart.

He finds that if Betty is into it, he ends up being into it, too, but perhaps it is just that whatever turns Betty on also turns him on. Or he is simply turned on by an aroused Betty. Even now, he finds himself less and less perturbed by the idea of fucking Betty with his double mainly because Betty asked him to, that all she would have to do is ask. Better, she appears extremely excited by the prospect, and that is the only green light his libido needs.

Betty drags her sweater over her head and then quickly unhooks her bra, letting it slide down her arms. “I trust you.”

“You’ll let us know,” he starts, cut off when she slides her wet cunt against his cock. “If it hurts, if you can’t anymore, okay?” he grinds out, holding her hips in place.

She reaches for the zipper of her skirt. “Of course, Juggie,” she promises, drawing her skirt over her head, and then she is in nothing but her thigh high socks.

The sight makes his heart stop, her ponytail messy, her flushed cheeks, her pert rosy nipples, the trimmed triangle of dark golden curls where he wants to trail his fingers, sink down and find that hard little nub where he knows she aches to be touched. When she goes to remove her socks as well, he stops her.

“You like these?”

His hands drift down to caress where her socks end, fingertips stroking the downy softness of her thighs. “I adore them.”

“Well, I don’t like these clothes on you,” she considers, fingers teasing the skin beneath the hem of his shirt.

  
He sits up, yanking his shirt over his head. She rises on her knees just enough so he can shimmy his jeans and jockeys down to his knees, kicking them the rest of the way off. “Better?” He wraps his arms around her waist and draws her forward, so he can suck one nipple into his mouth.

She whimpers, cradling the back of his head. Her nails raking through his hair sends a wave of goosebumps down his shoulders. He gently teethes her nipple, eliciting another groan, a tug on his hair. His cock jumps against her thigh with all the anticipation and neediness of a kid in line waiting to ride Splash Mountain.

The mattress shifts, announcing the return of his double. The other Jughead comes up behind her, naked as the day he was born, wrapping his hands around her waist and kissing the back of her neck. Betty giggles, looking over her shoulder at him. Jughead’s mouth pops off Betty’s nipple to watch them kiss, realizing it turns him on, watching himself kiss Betty. He is never allowed to see it from this angle, the look of pure bliss and contentment on her face, on his own. He feels it every time he kisses Betty, but to see the physical evidence of it on his face is both jarring and comforting, the intensity of it.

His double pulls away with a grin. “You ready?”

Jughead’s stomach does another excited little flip, his dick twitching in anticipation. If someone told him he would be in this situation this morning, he would have asked on what plane of existence. Better, if someone asked if he would be into it, he probably would have told them to blow, but it is Betty’s eagerness, unmistakable, practically palpable. Her visible excitement might be all he ever needs to get on board. She could probably charm into doing anything with that giddy smile alone.

His double inspects the bottle of aloe vera. “You sure this stuff is safe? he asks, cracking it open.

The momentous pop of the lid cements Jughead’s decision, the final turning point. When Betty confirms it is the next best thing, Jughead draws her head down to kiss her, promising against her mouth that they will go slow. “Say stop at any time,” he reminds her, and she nods, giving him a small Eskimo kiss.

He tugs on her ponytail again. “Promise you’ll say stop,” he urges. Betty is predisposed to pushing her limits unnecessarily, to the point it hurts her, and he wants to prevent any of that tonight. This is not a test of wills. This is her night. “If it gets to be too much, please say stop.”

Betty cups his jaw, the adoring smile on her face nearly painful to witness, but he needs to hear it. “I promise, Jug.”

His double kisses her bare shoulder, nuzzling her nape. “How do you want to do this?”

Betty reaches for his cock, giving three firm strokes before she guides it toward her entrance. Her name dies on his lips as she sinks down around him. He falls back onto the mattress, his eyes rolling back up in his head. His hands slip up over her thighs, bracing at the edges of her socks as she settles herself in his lap, filling herself up with him.

Betty moans, her head falling back to rest on the other Jughead’s shoulder. The beautiful arch of her neck coupled with the flush across her chest, her perfect breasts, Jughead loves her like this, unrestrained, open. 

He hears the squeak of the squeeze bottle, the slick sounds of his double slathering the gel over his fingers. The other Jughead beckons Betty to lean forward a bit, laying his hand over the base of her spine. “Remember to relax, okay?”

Betty _mms_ , flattening her palms on his chest as the other Jughead’s hands disappear behind her. Jughead takes a deep breath, folding one of his hands over her own, wondering if she can feel his heart pounding beneath his sternum. Her eyebrows pinch together, a tiny animal groan emitting from her throat, and Jughead guesses his double has zeroed in on his target.

“Still okay?” Jughead whispers, his thumb stroking the tops of her knuckles.

She nods, and then grabs his other hand off her thigh, directing it between her legs. “Can you?”

He is more than willing, his thumb dipping down and centering on her clit. She sighs, tilting her hips, a shallow thrust that makes his thoughts feel heavy and melty, pliable frosting in hot coffee. He wants nothing more than to lift his hips, sink inside of that tight, hot heat, but she needs slow, needs to remain relaxed.

“You’re doing very well,” his double commends, kissing the back of her head, her shoulder, before leaning in to whisper in her ear. “I can tell you’ve played with yourself here.”

Jughead hears it and then cannot unhear it, cannot unthink it, his imagination running wild. Betty, in this bed by herself, the fingers of one hand working her clit while she experiments with the other, slipping one slick digit inside her pink pucker, feeling that unbelievable grip herself. That shakes him in the best way, realizing that even though he has never put his fingers inside Betty’s ass before, he can experience it vicariously through his double. It makes him wonder if the other Jughead can feel the tight heat of her cunt right now.

“A little,” his double admits suddenly, and Betty gives Jughead a questioning look.

He shakes his head, offering up his best explanation. “It’s a double thing.”

When his double introduces a second finger, Betty tenses, her back going rigid. His double folds his hand over her shoulder, thumb working at the tension at the juncture of her neck. “Relax, baby,” he coos.

“Give me a moment,” Betty bids. 

Jughead keeps slowly moving his thumb over her clit, studying her face, the concentration knitted between her eyebrows as she shifts her hips back slightly, allowing the other Jughead’s fingers to sink a little deeper. In a few moments, she bids, “Keep going.”

His double praises her again, provoking a small, pleased smile. Jughead looks up into her adoring gaze and wonders if he deserves it, and then he reminds himself that all of this is him, technically, essentially, philosophically speaking. 

Betty scoffs fondly, sensing his existential distress and running her fingers through his hair. “Get out of your head, Juggie.”

“I’m here,” he promises, circling his thumb over her clit as evidence. 

Then, she starts rocking her hips back and forth, short thrusts to test her limits, and Jughead loses his train of thought in a whole other direction. The other Jughead works a third finger inside of her, and this time Betty does not tense up, sighing and pushing her hips back into his fingers. Jughead’s next inhale is shaky. He tries to control his exhale as she sinks down around him once more.

“Feels good?” his double asks. Jughead hears the heat in his voice, a tint of impatience, and feels for the guy. He did get the short end of the stick in this deal, and Jughead can imagine that the little tastes he gets through their ‘psychic’ bond or whatever are not nearly enough. 

“Yes, much better,” Betty tells him, and Jughead almost says _amen_ in confirmation as she rolls her hips with more authority, more purpose. If she keeps doing that, he isn’t going to last long. He stares up at the ceiling, reciting the alphabet backwards in his head to distract himself, forgetting what comes before _Q_ each time she drops her hips, his thoughts sliding into oblivion.

“God, I’m really close.” He senses that, feeling her insides condensing, the muscles in her thigh under his hand contracting. He keeps moving his thumb in tight, little circles, picking up the pace. He is right there with her.

“Is it okay?” she asks, her head falling back onto the double’s shoulder once more. She rocks herself on his cock, on the other Jughead’s fingers with more determination, losing herself in the rhythm, the inevitable build up. It is his favorite view in the entire world, Betty taking her pleasure, but it is going to yank him over edge.

He can feel his own impending orgasm creeping up on him. Jughead isn’t sure how his double feels on the matter until he starts thrusting his fingers in and out of her ass, stroking her insides with the clear and distinct objective of propelling Betty toward her climax. It will be Jughead’s undoing, but he continues to rub her clit, trying to time it with his double’s movements that he can only just sense from the ether.

The other Jughead reaches around to palm one breast, drawing her back against his front so he can whisper in her ear. Jughead cannot hear it. He can barely comprehend the echoes either, the solidity of his mind dissolving into a soup of emotions and sensations as he loses himself to the tight, hot suck of Betty’s cunt.

“Fuck,” he curses, bucking up into her. His balls are heavy, achy, the cord in his gut about to snap. Then, Betty’s coil snaps first, her insides fluttering and clenching around his cock, and his resolve crumbles.

His restraint fractures, grabbing her hips and holding her down, bottoming out as he empties himself inside of her. He hears Betty’s sharp cries, her body jolting against his hold, grinding her clit against his pelvic bone. Betty’s digs her nails into his stomach as she braces herself against him, shuddering, her body wracked with pleasure. Curling his toes and shivering in turn, he feels every bitten-off cry in her cunt, dragging him through the mess of post-climax endorphins.

“Shit, sorry,” he stammers, massaging the soft flesh behind Betty’s hipbones. He isn’t sure he was allowed to do that.

His double peers over Betty’s shoulder at him, scoffing, “You think this is over?” His hand migrates from her breast to latch onto her upper arm, like he is getting ready for more.

Coming out of her orgasm-induced stupor, Betty rises gingerly, letting his softening cock slip from her cunt with a small mewl.

“God, that was amazing,” she marvels, smoothing her hand across his chest, fingers traipsing through his treasure trail before they curl up between her legs, feeling the mess of her pussy, his come leaking out.

His double presses his mouth to her ear, and this time Jughead hears it. “You still want me to fuck you in the ass?”

Betty practically purrs _yes_ , bumping her bottom back into him. His double growls, sliding his hand over the soft swell of her stomach and tucking his fingers up between her legs, wanting to feel the mess himself. Betty flinches, too sensitive, but she turns and intimates, “I still want to try both of you.”

The other Jughead hums his praise, pulling his fingers out of her pussy and slip-sliding back around to her ass. Betty reaches behind her to stroke the other Jughead’s cock, and his double grins into an open-mouthed kiss against her shoulder, baring his teeth and sinking them lightly into her flesh. Betty gasps, arching into him.

Jughead watches as if entranced, seeing something he has only ever felt. He has never been able to resist the chemical pull of Betty, but witnessing the visible evidence of it, the rapture on his face, the possessiveness in his movements, and coupling that with Betty’s response, the returned want in her eyes, her actions, he feels all at once every facet of his love for her. It engulfs and feeds him, sends his pulse racing at the same time it tempers his nerves, and while Jughead could write volumes of prose, not one sentence would have an ounce of true color without her. He can see it, can see how very much he loves her, and it floors him, the unequivocal proof of his boundless devotion to this girl.

“Now that I’m more relaxed,” she muses, smiling as his double helps her line him up, squeezing more gel onto his cock.

It manages to make him smile, weirdly fond of her in that moment. It is one of the qualities he loves most about her. Her curiosity and creativity rival his own, and his world is far brighter and more interesting with her in it because like his double summed up perfectly, she never ceases to surprise him.

Still straddling him, Betty leans forward, her palms pressed to either side of his head. Jughead wavers for a beat. He didn’t know this was going to be the official position where his double fucks Betty in the ass, but he guesses that might be the other Jughead’s intention. It is his turn to watch her, them. Per his double, this is far from over. Per Betty, Jughead is expected to participate later, at some point, maybe soon.

Sensing that his inner thoughts are tangled once again, Betty searches his face, smiling fondly. “Do you think you could go again?” she asks, her voice quiet, gentle, hopeful, her palm sweeping the sweaty hair from his forehead.

He gulps, pressing his fingers into her thighs. They have done it before. After ten minutes or so, Jughead should be good to go, he thinks, but he has some lingering doubts about what comes next, mostly where Betty is concerned.

Jughead nods, moving his hands up her back and massaging her shoulders, trying to keep her pliant, relaxed as his double works the head of his cock into her ass. She sinks to her elbows, laying her torso over him, her soft breasts pressed to his chest. He can feel each stuttered breath, her efforts to control them. Her eyebrows pinch together, lips falling open in awe as his double inches his way inside of her.

“Still okay?” Jughead asks, kneading her shoulders.

She nods but then cinches her eyes shut tight. The hand in his hair morphs into a claw, getting a good grip and pulling. It doesn’t hurt, but it worries him. “Betty,” he frets, and his double immediately stops.

“I’m fine,” she grinds out. “Really, it doesn’t hurt that much at all.” She opens her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I’m serious. It’s just very intense,” she assures him, giving him a tight smile. “In a good way.”

His double braces a palm on her lower back, chuckling darkly and telling her, “Imagine what it’s gonna be like when we’re both inside of you.”

Betty bites her lip and then grins, releasing her grip on his hair. “Can’t wait,” she returns cheekily, but his double checks her by sliding in just a bit further, prompting a short little whine.

“Can I kiss you?” Betty asks suddenly, moaning as his double seats himself completely inside of her.

Jughead braces one hand on the back of her head and guides her mouth to his own. As soon as his lips find hers, her entire body relaxes, draping over his own, and he hears his double sigh in relief, a reverent, “Good girl.”

Jughead keeps her distracted, letting her take the lead with the kiss. He feels her fingers insistent on his chin, peeling his mouth open so she can sink her tongue inside his mouth. Her moan reverberates down his throat with his double’s first complete thrust, long and slow and drawn out.

Jughead rakes his nails down the back of her head, her shoulders, and she loves it, whispers hurriedly for him to keep doing it. “That feels really good, thank you.”

“How about?” he wonders, and she nods promptly, everything is fine, good, great, smashing her mouth against his again, sucking on his tongue.

His double maintains a slow, deliberate rhythm, drawing all the way to the tip before sinking down to the hilt. The movement rocks Betty’s body into him. It seems to steal the breath from her because she keeps trying to siphon off his own, barely giving him time to inhale before attacking his lips again. Then, her control shatters, and Jughead’s heart leaps into his throat. She tears her mouth away and keens, reaching back to plant her palm on the double’s hip.

Everything stops again, his double folding his hand over her own, panic in his eyes. “Betty, shit, are you okay?” He doesn’t want to move for fear something is really wrong, that he would do more damage by moving.

“Betty, baby,” Jughead whispers, beckoning her to look at him, her face buried in his shoulder.

“Fine,” she grinds out. “I’m fine.”

Jughead continues to pet her head, not believing her for one minute. His double leans back just a fraction to inspect her ass, hoping to identify the problem, when Betty latches onto his hip, holding him in place.

“I’m fine,” she repeats, firmer this time. “I didn’t tell you to stop.”

“Betty,” the other Jughead starts, looking sick with fear, that he might have hurt the girl they love most in the world. Both their hearts thud double time. “That didn’t sound like you were fine.”

Jughead feels dampness on his shoulder, and he thinks she is crying, but then she rises slowly, and he realizes it is spit. Her cheeks are flushed and shiny, green eyes hazy and unfocused. He doesn’t think he has ever seen her this overwhelmed. “Are you okay?”

She nods dumbly, planting her palms on his chest to push herself up. “I am, I really am,” she says, hiccupping. “It’s more intense than I expected. That’s all.”

She shifts her hips back and moans, grinding her bottom against his double. Her chin falls to her chest, and she does it again, fucking herself when his double doesn’t. “Please keep moving,” she begs, completely unaware of the dread on his double’s face, the concern pounding in Jughead’s chest. 

His double holds her hips in place like he is holding glass, but he gives her one tentative thrust, and she makes that same noise, her whine sharp, arresting.

“God, yes,” she moans again, mumbling that she likes it when he grinds against her at the end.

Jughead has never seen this side of Betty before, completely lost to the miasma of her senses. He has witnessed her lose her composure during sex, riding him with abandon to the point she was muttering gibberish, but this is entirely different. The look in her eyes is primal, practically rabid, her nails sinking into his stomach as she rocks back on the other Jughead’s cock filling her ass. It is – _fascinating_. He could make a study of her like this, write a dissertation on the cadence of her moans alone.

Then, Jughead feels it. He always knows it when he feels it. That first tickle of arousal, like someone dropped a match in a pit of dry tinder at the bottom of his belly. At first, it is just a curl of smoke, wisping and dying as quickly as it comes, but then, a flare of flame that builds with each wanton sigh, every plea for _more_ , Betty’s moans rising higher and higher until the fire in his stomach roars.

Betty peeks down between her legs and finds him hard. She grins like the cat who caught the canary. “Is that for me?” she muses, reaching down and wrapping her hands around his cock, thumbing the head to make him hiss and buck up beneath her. He stares up at her in awe, marveling to himself that yes, she will never cease to surprise him.

Jughead recognizes that his double has disappeared inside of his own lust, tongue and teeth worrying her shoulder as he thrusts mindlessly in and out of Betty’s ass. He doesn’t know how she does it. Betty dragging them down into the mire of her deepest desires, and Jughead can only ask for another helping, his cock jumping for joy in her hand.

“Now for the _plat du jour_ ,” Betty announces, rising on her knees, and Jughead feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room, eaten up by the fire in her eyes, the one blazing away in his gut, the one lighting up his double.

Turning her face, she cradles his double’s jaw, ordering him to pause for just a moment. The other Jughead seems to remember himself, glancing up and realizing that the last act is about to begin. For the first time that night, he looks as overwhelmed as Jughead feels, but there is the returned echo of giddy anticipation and deadly curiosity resounding in the back of his head.

Betty shimmies forward, guiding the head of his cock to her entrance, skimming it through her wet folds. Jughead takes a deep breath and holds it, unable to tear his gaze away from hers, feeling locked inside of her eyes, bound up within the restricted green of her irises. Her lips part as she drops her hips just a fraction, allowing the head of his cock to slip inside of her.

_Holy shit_. This is going to be a tight fit.

Betty stops, closing her eyes and panting. “Sorry, I just realized there’s only one way this is gonna work,” she points out, reaching behind to nudge his double backwards. The double grunts as his cock slips from her ass, taking his dick in hand to give himself a few mollifying strokes.

Then, Betty drops her hips with a pleased sigh, allowing Jughead’s cock to fill up her pussy. It never feels anything less than sublime, being inside of Betty.

Betty repositions herself, draping her torso over his own once more. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, running her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and whispering, “This is going to be so much fun.”

He hopes that is true, his nerves buzzing and sparking with anticipation. His double resumes his post behind her, lining his cock up with her ass. He feels Betty relax, her insides melting. It ends up being wholly necessary as his double pushes his dick into her ass. Betty buries her face against his shoulder, clutching at his hair, moaning long and low into his collar bone once his double seats his cock fully inside of her.

_Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit_. It reverberates back and forth in his head, in his double’s, the mind-blowing clutch of Betty’s cunt and ass around their cocks.

Betty sinks her teeth into his shoulder, and he hisses, wrapping his arms around her. His fingers find all the tension points in her back to soften her, calm her down, and she takes the lord’s name in vain, sighing all the breath from her lungs.

“Are you okay?” Jughead ventures gently even while he can barely comprehend the pressure around his cock at the moment.

“Mm, yes,” she gets out. “Wow, that went better than I expected.”

She peels her face away from his shoulder, her eyes wet and shaky with overstimulation. “I think I’m going to make some very weird noises,” she confesses tightly, like she is struggling to hold onto reality. “So, um, don’t be alarmed.”

Jughead sweeps his palm across her cheek, brushing some hair that has escaped from her ponytail. Jesus, her ponytail is barely a ponytail at all anymore, he considers wryly, smiling, his fondness for this girl spilling over. “You make as much noise as you want,” he assures her.

She nods, her eyes fluttering closed, looking bowled over by sensation. Jughead himself feels boggled beyond belief, so he cannot imagine what this feels like for her. She feels small in his arms, swallowed up by two Jugheads, but by the look of pure ecstasy on her face, she loves it. That is all the okay he needs.

“You can move,” she finally says to his double.

“I’ll go slow,” the other Jughead promises, gripping her hipbones to hold her in place.

Jughead can feel his double’s knees on either side of his thighs, and as he shifts his hips forward, he can feel Betty’s insides moving around him. Christ, he can feel his double’s cock moving in her ass, and it is unlike anything he has ever felt in his entire life.

The other Jughead keeps a steady rhythm, giving her shallow, short thrusts, but it manages to send Jughead reeling, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. He doesn’t even have to move, and it feels amazing, feeling Betty’s cunt clutching at him and the slide of his double’s cock simultaneously. He even gets little licks of sensation through the ether, the gripping suction of Betty’s ass, a phantom pleasure that compounds the one thrumming through his body.

Betty sits up a little, and he feels the drag of her soft breasts on his chest, the hard peaks of her nipples. Her jaw is slack, eyes closed, oblivious to everything but the sensibility of the moment. Given some wiggle room, Jughead wedges his hand between their bodies, his fingertips skimming over her pubic bone and dipping down to where her pussy is stretched around his cock. He doesn’t touch her clit directly at first, instead letting his fingers glance around the periphery, folding the hood over the hard little nub and massaging gently.

Betty gasps, her head falling forward. His double groans, feeling her insides seize up.

“Too much,” Jughead figures, but he keeps moving his fingers in a slow, teasing circle.

“Intense,” Betty gets out and then practically shrieks when his double involuntarily jerks his hips forward.

He moans and holds himself there, bottomed out in her ass. His double’s forehead falls to her shoulder, folding himself around her and panting. “Fucking understatement.”

“Any pain?” Jughead asks once for safety.

Betty shakes her head, and then she rocks forward once. The movement drags her clit across his cock. He keeps his fingers pressed over the hood of her clit, exhaling roughly when she does it again, thrusting herself on his cock, humming from the friction against her clit.

“God, that’s good,” she marvels, rising a few inches and dropping her hips over and over again. She angles her hips to maximize the contact of her clit with his cock, balancing herself with her palms on his chest. His double curses, and Jughead concurs, losing himself to the snug drag of her pussy on his cock, the neighborly pressure of his double’s dick in her ass.

His double presses his mouth to her ear, his whisper hoarse when he asks if he can fuck her ass while she comes, and she nods, dropping her chin to her chest, letting the other Jughead wrap his hand possessively around her upper arm and getting a grip on one hipbone. Jughead can see the punishing grip of his fingers on her arm, her hip, yet his next thrust is careful but purposeful. This time Jughead moans, his head falling back onto the pillows.

He keeps his fingers folded over the soft flesh above her clit, though, letting her work out the right friction and tempo to bring her to climax. His is not far around the bend. Betty and the other Jughead get into a working rhythm, synchronizing their movements. His double rocks forward as she rolls her hips back, dragging on Jughead’s cock as his double sinks inside of her ass. It is a grip and pull that seems to last forever.

Toes curling, Jughead feels another orgasm building, his gut tightening. He warns Betty, and she nods emphatically, shortening her thrusts, her own peak approaching. Jughead tries to keep his eyes open. He wants – needs to see it, knows it is going to shake her to the core because his own feels like it might rend him in two, the tightness on his cock otherworldly.

Betty shatters first, her head falling back. Jughead traces the taut curve of her throat, the coil in his gut snapping at the first sound of her orgasm breaking from her throat, a sound Jughead can only associate with the epitome of completion.

The full force of her climax forces the other Jughead to abandon ship, his cock slipping from her ass. His double sounds like he has been gutted, taking his cock in his hand and emptying himself out on her backside, spurting like someone swiped an artery.

Jughead feels those spectral waves of euphoria, the tremble of Betty’s insides around his cock, the sound of her rapture rising high to the ceiling, and the dam breaks inside of him. His climax roars through him, like being caught in a rip current, his body tumbling through the waves. He almost bites his tongue from the impact of it, grabbing Betty’s hips to rock her back and forth, drawing out the pulsing remnants of her orgasm and his own.

As his nerves resettle, the feeling returning to his fingers and toes and the rest of his limbs, the only sound he registers is the cacophony of gasping breaths, his own, Betty’s, his double’s, like all of them just finished a marathon and crossed the finish line together.

Betty catches her breath first, sighing and then laughing to herself, her green eyes practically sparkling with leftover endorphins. Sweeping his hair back off his forehead, she then leans forward and kisses him. “Thank you,” she murmurs against his lips.

Jughead holds her hand against his chest, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. He doesn’t know how to respond to that, and what comes out of his mouth doesn’t really make sense. “Any time.”

Betty giggles, rising on her knees to let his cock slip from her pussy. She falls to the side, nuzzling her cheek into her pillow, looking sleepy and sedate. When his double falls back on the pillow next to her, she turns and kisses him, thanking him, too, and he murmurs, “Our pleasure.”

His double manages to be the most rational one of the bunch, reaching over and grabbing a tissue off the nightstand to wipe up the mess on Betty’s back, leaking out from between her legs. “You’re so sweet, Juggie,” she coos, wrapping her body around him, pressing her cheek to his shoulder.

“Betty,” his double coaxes, thumbing her cheekbone. “Are you okay?”

She hums happily, rubbing her palm across his chest. “Sleepy,” she mutters, closing her eyes.

His double looks at him over her head, an unsaid question on his face. He cannot move and check himself with her body wrapped around him. Jughead props himself up on his elbow, gazing down and searching her body for any signs of injury, anything that might need immediate attention, but she looks fine. “I think she’s okay,” he concludes. “At least until morning.”

His double exhales with relief and then yawns. It is contagious, Jughead yawning, too, his eyes drooping. He glances at the bedside clock and thinks it reads eleven-something, but his consciousness is slipping. Betty is okay, happy and sated, curled up in blissful repose under his double’s arm. Jughead wants to be there, somewhere in there, his body sinking back onto the bed, his head finding a pillow. On autopilot, like his own internal compass knows where to go, he presses himself flush to Betty’s back, wrapping an arm around her waist, feeling his other half on the other side. Someone covers them in Betty’s comforter, and Jughead’s eyes fall closed, feeling a familiar forearm draped over his waist. The pleasant tempo of Betty’s breathing lulls them both to sleep. 

* * *

Jughead wakes up to a mouthful of Betty’s hair and the sunlight streaming through the open curtains. Her soft and pliant body is a warm comfort against his side, and the easy cadence of her breaths would lull him back to sleep if it weren’t for the hair in his mouth. He peels it off his tongue, chuckling to himself while he keeps her cradled in the crook of his arm. He loathes the morning, but mornings with an armful of Betty are always welcome, even if it comes with a side of hair in his mouth.

He gathers her closer, pressing his mouth to her crown. She grumbles, burrowing her face deeper into his chest to escape the intrusive sunlight. Then, she seems to remember something, her arm twisting behind her as she searches the other side of the bed for someone who is no longer there.

She tilts her face up towards him, realization dawning. “He’s gone,” she says with a tinge of disappointment.

He smiles and combs his fingers through her hair. “No, he’s right here.”

She snorts, balancing her chin on his chest. “I was convinced it was a dream, but my body definitely feels it.”

Jughead smooths a palm over her shoulders, down the center of her back. “Sore?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” she intimates, whistling low.

“I could draw you a bath,” he offers, fingers grazing in her hair again, falling in soft waves around her face.

“That would help,” she supposes, pecking him on the shoulder in thanks.

Betty turns her cheek to his chest and sighs. “I guess that was a once in a lifetime deal.”

“Well,” Jughead trails, considering their options.

Last night was a lot more fun than he thought it would be. It isn’t something they would or could do often. Jughead himself is mildly sore from last night, although some of that might be from the altercation in the corn maze. However, if he is feeling a little worse for wear, he cannot imagine how exhausted Betty must be right now. Her body probably could not withstand doing that on a regular basis, but he can admit that if they had the chance, he would do it again, later down the road, of course.

Betty sighs again, a mixture of wistfulness and contentment.

“You know,” Jughead starts, smoothing a lock of her hair between his fingers in contemplation. “We still have two spells left.”

Betty lifts her head, resting the point of her chin on folded hands. “Are you implying what I think you’re implying?”

He shrugs, feigning nonchalant. “I mean, Sabrina gave us two spells of our choosing. Who’s to say we couldn’t make the same wish again next year?”

Betty’s lips break into a full-blown, megawatt grin. Her joy is infectious, blooming warm and voluminous, feeling like his chest is full of feathers. She moves up his body, grabbing his face between her hands.

“Jughead Jones, I love you,” she declares firmly, kissing him soundly on the mouth, effectively waking him up. He lets his lips and tongue and enthusiasm return the sentiment in full, his whole body resonating with it.

When she peels herself away, there is something mischievous lurking in her eyes. “Although,” she starts, trailing off, and he wants to shake his head in exasperation because she doesn’t need to cast any more lures. He has been on the hook for the past four years, and he isn’t going anywhere.

“Spit it out, Betts.”

Biting her lip, she pushes up on her hands, gazing down at him through the golden curtain of her hair, the sunlight catching every strand and giving her an otherworldly appearance. He reaches up to touch her, just to know he can, feeling complete and full and certain he will never squander his time with her again, not to miss this.

Then, fighting a smirk, she proposes, “Next year, we could do two Bettys instead.” Beaming up at her, Jughead knows he will never love anyone as much as he loves Betty Cooper. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, the best lube is always lube. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading and have a lovely weekend :D


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